As Egypt prepares for a crucial presidential election run-off, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, his two sons and former top security chiefs will learn Saturday whether they have been found guilty of murder and corruption.

Mr. Mubarak’s court case has the potential to ignite more violence in an already badly polarized country and an acquittal or light sentence could re-ignite Egypt’s stalled revolution.

In anticipation of the verdict, Egyptian officials have unveiled plans to deploy 20,000 police and more than 160 tanks in and around the Cairo police compound where Mr. Mubarak’s trial took place in a special courtroom.

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Egyptian newspapers say bomb squads will sweep the special Police Academy courtroom on Friday and troops are already taking up positions around the police compound and in streets around the army-run International Medical Center where the 84-year-old Mr. Mubarak has been detained and is receiving treatment since he went on trial last August.

The ailing Mr. Mubarak, who ruled Egypt like a pharaoh for nearly 30 years, could face anything from three years in prison to death by hanging.

He is charged with corruption and the killing of nearly 850 demonstrators during the 18-day long revolution that deposed him in February 2011.

He shares the murder charges with Egypt’s former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly and six high ranking security officials, and is charged with corruption, involving accepting bribes in the form of deeply discounted real estate deals, along with his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, and a businessman, Hussein Salem, who has already fled the country.

Sarah Conard/ReutersMartin Havlat scored in double overtime to give the Sharks a Game 1 win.

In spite of decades of ruthless authoritarian rule under Mr. Mubarak, during which human rights abuses, torture and repression were commonplace, there is no guarantee the former president will be convicted.

His four month long trial was filled with contradictory testimony that both seemed to exonerate and condemn Mr. Mubarak and his security chiefs.

One policeman swore he had been ordered to treat protesters as “brothers,” while several others said they were ordered not to carry deadly weapons when trying to break up demonstrations.

Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of the military ruling council that took over from Mr. Mubarak, testified behind closed doors during the trial but lawyers for the families of some of the victims who attended the hearing said he did not implicate Mr. Mubarak in the deaths protesters who were killed during attempts to crush the revolution.

Under Egyptian law, a judge can base his findings on both the evidence before him and on other circumstances surrounding a crime.

Numerous acquittals of low-ranking policemen accused of shooting protesters during the revolution have already engendered a sense of cynicism among many Egyptians.

Before protests erupted in Egypt on January 25, 2011, Mr. Mubarak was virtually untouchable. He had been president of the Arab world’s most populous country for 29 years; survived 10 assassination attempts and had the backing of the United States and Egypt’s military.

While only a handful of Mr. Mubarak’s supporters have been put on trial so far, more than 12,000 civilians have been rushed to judgement in controversial military tribunals since the armed forces took control of the country.

“There has been no serious effort to investigate and hold accountable officials for deaths in custody, unlawful detention, torture and other systematic human rights abuses during the Mubarak era,” says a recent Human Rights Watch report on Mr. Mubarak’s trial.

According to a company statement released Wednesday, the pop star has become an investor and representative for the chips.The snack brand Popchips is getting a new celebrity endorser: Katy Perry.
According to a company statement released Wednesday, the pop star has become an investor and representative for the chips. Perry says she’ll be its creative partner.
[np-related]
Perry, who is the subject of the recently released 3-D documentary <em>Katy Perry: Part of Me</em>, joins Ashton Kutcher as a celebrity endorser of the snack food. Kutcher’s regional ads garnered some criticism earlier this year when one depicting him as an Indian man was seen by some as racist. It was pulled and the company said there was no intent to offend.
Perry’s ads will be unveiled in the fall.

This “compromises the current government’s reputation and sheds doubts on its commitment to uphold Egypt’s human rights obligations and the rule of law,” the report says.

Egypt’s ruling military council refused to arrest or charge Mr. Mubarak for months and only made the move after increasingly strident street protests.

Still, the shock of seeing the former president in a prisoner’s cage, even though he lay on a hospital bed and said little during his trial other than to acknowledge his presence, rattled Egypt to its core.

Whatever the verdict Saturday, it may re-ignite another round of street demonstrations, just the campaign for the presidential run-off vote, scheduled for June 16 and June 17, gets underway.

The election is essentially a re-fighting of the political battles that raged through Egypt during the Mubarak era, pitting a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Mursi, against Mr. Mubarak’s last premier, former air force commander Ahmed Shafiq.

Only this time around, the Islamists, who were banned or imprisoned under Mr. Mubarak, now have a stranglehold on Egypt’s parliament and it is the military who are fighting to retain their status and influence.

Mr. Shafiq is widely regarded as an extension of the former Mubarak regime and to many represents a continuation of military rule.

Several hundred protesters stormed his election headquarters in Cairo on Monday and set the building on fire.

In the run-up to the election and Saturday’s trial verdict, demonstrators have returned to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the revolution, to chant slogans against both Mr. Mursi and Mr. Shafiq.

Rendering a verdict against the Mubaraks is unlikely to bring a sense of closure to Egypt. Appeals of any decision could drag on for years.

And the former president’s two sons aren’t about to be released from jail. They were charged with corruption and insider trading Wednesday in a new case involving $400 million in bribes in the 2007 sale of a major Egyptian bank.

Despite a sputtering economy, fears of a European financial crisis and threats of a worldwide recession, the presidential campaign remains riveted to claims U.S. President Barack Obama has launched a “war on religion” while Mitt Romney and the Republicans are “waging war on women.”

The sexual and religious politics of previous decades is back with a vengeance as abortion, contraception, gay marriage and civil rights take their turn centre stage in the race for the White House.

It’s part of a tradition in modern politics. Once the primaries are over, U.S. presidential candidates seek to solidify their base, concentrate on raising election funds and emphasize divisive “wedge issues” in a bid to persuade some voters to abandon their opponents.

“Some of the most persuadable voters in the electorate — those voters most likely to be responsive to campaign information — are partisans who disagree with their party on a policy issue they care about.

“Advances in information and communications technology encourage the use of wedge issues by making it easier to identify who should be targeted and with what campaign messages. It’s not a case of pandering to the base, but an appeal to persuadable voters from the opposing partisan camp.”

REUTERS/NASA/HandoutThe U.S. space shuttle Atlantis is seen with a solar panel of the International Space Station in the foreground as it departs the station in this still image taken from NASA TV on July 19, 2011. The mission is the last of a 12-year program to build and service the orbital outpost, the primary legacy of NASA's shuttle fleet. Atlantis' return to Earth, scheduled for Thursday, will conclude the 30-year-old U.S. space shuttle program, with no replacement U.S. spaceships ready to fly.

When he sought re-election in 2004, saddled with a sagging economy and an unpopular war, then-president George W. Bush turned his attention to “values voters,” who were seen as a powerful new grassroots movement that was changing the dynamics of U.S. politics.

They were overwhelmingly white rural residents, regular churchgoers and lived in heartland states. They also identified “moral issues” as their core standard in deciding who should run the country. God, guns, abortion, school prayer, stem-cell research, opposition to gay marriage and a determination to defeat the evil of terrorism dominated their agendas and influenced their voting.

Issues such as the economy or the war in Iraq mattered less than having a leader who saw things with moral clarity, who spoke of right and wrong, good and evil, and dealt in moral absolutes, instead of carefully nuanced compromises.

Wedge issues seek to siphon off targeted voters from an opponent’s minimum winning coalition and have played a role in presidential elections for decades.

In 1968, Richard Nixon exploited the simmering resentment of working-class whites and Southern Democrats to highlight law and order issues and school bussing.

In 1972, he announced his opposition to “unrestricted abortion” and won re-election with 60% of the Roman Catholic vote.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan used his opposition to abortion as a rallying cry to attract social conservatives.

AFP filesRonald Reagan attracted social conservatives with his opposition to abortion.

And in 1992, Republican presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan described the perennial political battles over wedge issues as “culture wars.”

“These issues get to fundamental beliefs, ones that are often uncompromising,” says Mr. Sabato. “They are natural targets for candidates to exploit for their own electoral gain.”

“However, in this cycle, issues such as gay marriage, abortion and contraception are going to play only a minor role,” he predicts.

“Voters are primarily concerned about the economy and in which direction it seems to be headed. While there will be voters who are passionate about social issues, a large majority of them are so firmly aligned with one party or the other that the issues can’t be used as ‘wedges.’ Few independent voters will be swayed by these issues — and there actually are very few true swing independents.

“2012 will be a polarizing election, essentially built around approval or disapproval of President Obama’s job performance.”

Still, as the presidential campaign gets under way and well before voters rally around candidates at summer conventions, wedge issues have come to dominate political discourse.

This week, 43 Catholic organizations — dioceses, schools, hospitals, social service agencies and other institutions — filed the largest religious lawsuit in U.S. history, challenging a recent government regulation that requires employers to include coverage for abortions and contraceptives in employee health-care plans.

The issue rapidly became one of religious freedom, when the government refused to exempt religious hospitals and universities.

“Under the rules, the only way a Catholic hospital, school, social service agency or similar group can stay Catholic is to limit hospital care, social services or education to Catholics,” says Archbishop John Myers of Newark, N.J.

“This administration gives us three options: violate our beliefs, go out of business or serve only our members. This is not acceptable.”

‘For 220 years, picking the president has remained, at least in terms of statistically provable results, a man’s prerogative’

As Republicans lined up to accuse Mr. Obama of waging war on organized religion, Democrats have tried to turn the tables by accusing them of waging war on women.

Similar claims and counterclaims surrounded the controversy that erupted when the Susan G. Komen Foundation, an organization devoted to fighting breast cancer, suddenly decided to withdraw $650,000 in funding from Planned Parenthood, the U.S.’s largest provider of abortions (300,000 a year).

Planned Parenthood supporters claimed they were being attacked by the religious right and Republicans after Republicans in at least eight states introduced legislation to prevent public funding for the group.

The disputes have seen both parties trot out traditional claims to voter allegiance on wedge issues. Republicans present themselves as the party of “family values” while Democrats stress their commitment to “women’s issues.”

Mark Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, notes recent “polls reveal a potentially historic wrinkle: the women’s vote could now be definitively decisive in electing the president.”

“For 220 years, picking the president has remained, at least in terms of statistically provable results, a man’s prerogative,” he says.

“But this may finally change in 2012. The latest polls suggest another important shift: younger women may be kingmakers — offsetting Romney’s gain among older white men, angry at their fate in this struggling economy.”

Republicans hope Mr. Obama’s support for state-funded abortions and contraception and his recent endorsement of gay marriage will unite Christians of all stripes, making it easier for them to rally behind Mr. Romney.

“Same-sex marriage may yet be a bridge too far, even for a dying Christian America,” says columnist and former Republican presidential hopeful Mr. Buchanan.

“On the plus side for Obama, his decision is producing hosannas from the elites and an infusion of cash from those who see same-sex marriage as the great moral and civil rights issue of our time. But Obama may also have just solved Mitt Romney’s big problem: how to get all those evangelical Christians and cultural conservatives not only to vote for him but to work for him.”

It may be the last battle of Egypt’s revolution. After 60 years of military rule and stage-managed elections, the country holds its first-ever competitive presidential election Wednesday and Thursday.

The result, which is far from predictable, will shape the future of the Arab world’s most populous state and could determine whether last year’s Arab Spring can produce a new era in Middle East politics.

Egyptian politics, which for the last 15 months has been punctuated by violence and suspicion, have shifted from the streets to voting booths as the country is gripped with election fever.

Months of debate and protest, street battles, political shouting matches, graffiti, slogans, newspaper reports and Internet blogs have boiled down to an election for a president who still doesn’t have an officially defined role in the unfinished constitution.

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AMR MOUSSA, 75. Hosni Mubarak’s ex-foreign minister has positioned himself between the old order and the new, touting his government experience while seeking to show how he often defied his former boss.

ABDEL MONEIM ABOL FOTOUH, 60. Long respected for his defiance of authority during decades of autocratic rule, he was ejected from the Muslim Brotherhood for running for president against its wishes.

MOHAMED MURSI, 60. Pitched into the race by the disqualification of the Brotherhood’s first-choice candidate, Mursi is trying to dispel a reputation as the movement’s Plan B.

HAMDEEN SABAHY, 57. Leader of the pan-Arab nationalist Karama (Dignity) party and a leftist like his hero Gamal Abdel Nasser.

MOHAMED SELIM EL-AWA, 69. Former secretary-general of the International Federation of Islamic Scholars and a jurist who helped draft laws in several Arab countries.

KHALED ALI, 40. The activist lawyer has a dedicated following after campaigning for labour and social rights, and calls himself the candidate of the poor.

HISHAM EL-BASTAWISY, 60. Judge who campaigned against rigging of elections during the Mubarak era.

HOSSAM KHAIRALLAH, 67. Campaigning on a platform of education reform and cutting unemployment.

MAHMOUD HOSSAM, 47. Says he would restore stability and the credibility of the police.

ABDALLAH AL-ASHAL, 67. Campaigning for social justice, freedom and an end to corruption.

A dozen candidates are vying for the post. Experts say any two of the five or six leading candidates could enter a second round run-off election scheduled for June 16 and 17, with the final results being released no later than June 21.

The vote pits Islamists against secularists and revolutionaries against members of the former regime.

But whoever does win is expected to set Egypt’s course for decades to come. Their election may well determine the role of religion in Arab political life; it could decide how much influence the Egyptian military will continue to wield, and it may place strains on Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, thereby determining the prospects of peace throughout the region.

“Never before have we seen such a competitive contest in Egypt or, for that matter, in any Arab country,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. “And never before have we had a presidential contest, anywhere in the world that I can recall, where we have no idea what the winner will actually win when the election is over.”

This week’s vote is the third election in Egypt in the last year and each one has been filled with surprises and uncertainties.

Last fall, a referendum to ratify constitutional changes put forward by the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces was widely opposed by liberals, secularists and the young people who forced Hosni Mubarak from power through their demonstrations in Tahrir Square. But an unexpected alliance, between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, resulted in the referendum passing by a 3-to-1 margin.

Parliamentary elections, held from last November to January, were dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, but they also saw the radical Salafist Islamist bloc win almost a quarter of all the seats.

But concerns that the Muslim Brotherhood might dominate Egypt’s politics, could see the group’s official candidate, Mohamed Mursi, do poorly. Still, the party’s grassroots organizing ability has the potential to get out the vote.

Egypt’s liberal/secularist vote is split across a range of candidates.

Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who broke with the party to run as an independent, is a self-styled “liberal Islamist” who has the backing of some of the Egyptian revolution’s young standard bearers, such as former Google executive Wael Ghonim, as well as the backing of the Salafist al-Nour Party.

Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister under Mr. Mubarak and the former secretary-general of the Arab League, has the support of many secularists. While Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force commander who served as Egypt’s last prime minister under Mr. Mubarak, is receiving support from people who are worried about the economy and long for the stability.

Egypt’s Coptic Christians, who make up 10% of the electorate, may also have an impact. They are worried about how Islamists treat minorities and may seek the protection of candidates linked to the old government.

“Over the past 15 months, Egyptian voters have seen a frightening deterioration of security,” said Haitham Tabei, a journalist with Egyptian newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. “[That] has discredited the revolution in the eyes of Egyptian voters, who are now desperate to find an exit to the cycle of violence, even if it means bringing back the Mubarak regime and not just its symbols.”

While Egypt’s presidential vote is supposed to end the military-led transition to democracy, fears persist the country’s generals may try to continue to rule from behind a democratic facade.

But any failure to hand over power to a civilian government could result in renewed street protests and more bloodshed.

Other uncertainties hanging over the vote include the risk of electoral fraud, violence, or even the sudden acquittal of Mr. Mubarak on murder and corruption charges between the two rounds of voting.

“This is not a contest that will put in office a leader who will have the power of a President Mubarak or Sadat or Nasser,” warned Mr. Zogby. “Past presidents came out of the military and controlled the ruling party and parliament and the security services and other institutions of state. The current situation is less clear, more diffuse.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/egyptian-election-2012/feed0stdAmr Moussa, pictured above in one of his campaign ads, is one candidate in Egypt’s first election for president, which as a job still doesn’t have a defined role.Goodspeed Analysis: Power struggle developing between neo-Maoists, reformers ahead of party congresshttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/peter-goodspeed-neo-maoists-want-better-division-of-the-cake-in-china-reformers-call-for-making-the-cake-bigger
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/peter-goodspeed-neo-maoists-want-better-division-of-the-cake-in-china-reformers-call-for-making-the-cake-bigger#respondSat, 19 May 2012 02:43:23 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=78933

Mark Rolston / AFP / Getty Images

There are growing signs of an intense power struggle in China before this fall’s crucial Communist party congress that will install a new generation of leaders.

Ideological disagreements over the direction China should take are matched by a growing clash of institutional interests, factional fights, spectacular scandals and swirling rumours, as powerful personalities scramble to determine who should guide the country over the next decade.

“China has reached a crossroads,” warns François Godement of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Either it moves quickly forward, or it will regress to a planned economy run by crony capitalism and Maoism.”

The country is split, he says, between two opposing factions.

“In one direction, we find the vested interests opposed to reform that are entrenched in state-owned enterprises and rent-seeking monopolies. They are addicted to the low-wage, high-subsidy export economy,” he says.

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“Encouraging China to move in the other direction are the reformers. They represent the rising demands of an urban class with high education, the bevy of internationalized or smaller private firms with high-tech ambitions, and a push by labour to get a better share of the pie.”

For months, there have been discreet signs of conflict between the neo-Maoists and reformers, who were once dismissed as “capitalist roaders.”

Last year, a 17-tonne statue of the revered sage Confucius was placed in front of the National Museum, across from a giant portrait of Mao Zedong, in Tiananmen Square.

It mysteriously disappeared four months later, replaced by a portrait of Sun Yat-sen, founder of the first Chinese Republic in 1911.

When Mao came to power in 1949, he attacked Confucianism as “feudal” and “slave-driven,” and during the Cultural Revolution his Red Guards tried to eradicate all signs of it.

But in the modern era of economic transformation, Confucianism, with its stress on respect for the elderly, social harmony and obedience, has supplanted the Maoist ideology of class conflict.

Sun Yat-sen, on the other hand, is widely regarded as a symbol of China’s quest for institutional democracy.

Tiananmen Square’s symbolic clash of interests erupted into a full-fledged faction fight in April: Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai was purged and placed under investigation for “severe violations” of party rules, while his wife and an aide were arrested on suspicion of murdering a British businessman.

Mr. Bo’s sudden downfall has thrown China’s carefully balanced leadership succession plans into chaos, sparked new rumours of infighting and imminent purges, and spawned its worst political crisis in two decades. It has also revealed deep ideological and personal rifts among the top leaders.

In recent weeks, two prominent army generals have been questioned about their links to Mr. Bo. The Financial Times newspaper reported Zhou Yongkang, head of the security services and a Politburo member, has been forced to relinquish day-to-day control of the country’s police, courts and domestic spy networks.

On Wednesday, 16 retired mid-level party members signed an online petition and open letter to Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, demanding his resignation and the firing of China’s top propaganda official, Liu Yunshan, another Politburo member.

Mr. Zhou was accused of backing a movement to revive Maoism and criticized for supporting Mr. Bo, while Mr. Liu was targeted for blocking calls for political change in the news media.

In a country that is increasingly prosperous and powerful, the intricacies of the Chinese leadership crisis demonstrate just how frighteningly insecure it remains.

“Just as past political crises such as the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen crackdown undermined the legitimacy and effectiveness of the regime, both domestically and internationally, the current crisis has similar potential,” warns Christopher Johnson of Washington’s Centre for Strategic & International Studies.

Mr. Bo’s dismissal “shattered the public facade of unity that the Chinese leadership obsessively strives to project and put an uncomfortable spotlight on the often ostentatious lifestyles of senior Chinese leaders and their families.”

Mr. Bo is one of China’s “princelings,” the sons and daughters of revolutionary heroes and party elders who enjoy extraordinary power, privilege and influence. He is also a protégé of former president Jiang Zemin and the son of Bo Yibo, one of the founders of the Chinese Communist party.

With their power rooted in the past, the “princelings” tend to glorify old Maoist ideals and find themselves competing with the technocratic reformers, who generally have their roots in the Chinese Communist Youth League and now surround Mr. Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao.

The ambitious and aggressive Mr. Bo was pushing for promotion at this fall’s party congress, when seven of the nine members of the ruling Standing Committee of the Politburo’s Central Committee will be replaced.

He appealed to left-wing intellectuals and ultra-nationalists who trumpet the importance of state-owned enterprises, traditional socialist values and the inspirational power of Mao-era propaganda. He was widely expected to replace Mr. Zhou.

As party secretary in Chongqing, China’s largest city, Mr. Bo championed a return to Maoist principles, encouraged the expansion of state-owned industries over private enterprise, and ran an administration that spent heavily on health care, housing, pensions and education.

His “Chongqing Model” stood in stark contrast to the economic liberalism of the reform movement’s “Guangdong Model,” based on the economic and political reforms introduced in the southern province on Hong Kong’s doorstep.

Guangdong is China’s most economically vibrant province and the site of its early economic experiments. Now led by Wang Yang, its party secretary who is widely expected to be promoted to a top Politburo post this fall, Guangdong has given a greater role to civil society organizations, promoted private enterprise, encouraged trade unions and allowed the news media a freer hand.

Where Mr. Bo called for a “better division of the cake,” Mr. Wang calls for “making the cake bigger.” The core of their fight was a debate over balancing economic change and social stability, while promoting their own protégés and policies.

But Mr. Bo’s neo-Maoist ideas alarmed many Chinese leaders, especially since they were tied to a single dominant personality. Having lived through such ill-conceived Maoist schemes as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, they shun personality politics and seek consensus.

“To some in the senior leadership, Bo meant instability,” says Mr. Johnson. “His populism, arrogance and flagrant public campaigning for advancement made him a kind of nail that stuck up in Chinese politics, one the leadership had to hammer down to underscore its ironclad commitment to consensus-oriented decision making.”

Mr. Bo’s sudden removal and the apparent loss of influence of a hardliner like Mr. Zhou have unsettled China’s factional balance and set off new rounds of lobbying, arm-twisting and power politics by special interests.

The military is determined to protect its influence and budget increases; state-owned enterprises want to guard their monopolies; and family clans, bureaucrats and the security forces want a say in who will rise to the top.

“If the reformers get the upper hand, this may prompt a conservative backlash,” Mr. Godement says.

Literally overnight, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has jolted his government toward the centre of Israeli politics, given himself the largest ruling coalition in the country’s history and emerged with a virtually free hand to deal with the two major issues facing the country — peace with the Palestinians and Iran’s nuclear program.

The announcement at 2:30 a.m. Tuesday of a new “national unity” coalition with the opposition Kadima party took Israel by surprise, infuriated Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents and freed the Prime Minister of his reliance on religious and hawkish right-wing elements in the Knesset.

It also put an end to talk of early elections in September and guarantees Mr. Netanyahu will remain in power until October 2013.

“Nothing less than an atomic bomb was dropped with the dramatic agreement that has inserted Kadima into the government and called off an early vote,” declared columnist Yosi Verter in the newspaper Haaretz.

The coalition deal “sends a very strong signal to Tehran, but also to Europe and the United States, that Israel is united and the leadership is capable of dealing with the threats that are there if and when it becomes necessary,” said Gerald Steinberg, political scientist at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv.

The new coalition gives Mr. Netanyahu’s government 94 of the Knesset’s 120 members and makes Kadima party leader Shaul Mofaz, an Iranian-born former defence minister and chief of staff of the Israeli Defence Force, the country’s Deputy Prime Minister. It also pledges the new government to pursue four priorities: resolving whether ultra-orthodox Jews should serve in the military, producing a new budget, reforming Israel’s election process and advancing peace talks with the Palestinians.

On the second of a four-day state visit to Canada, Shimon Peres, Israel’s President and a former Labour Party prime minister, said, “A broad national unity government is good for the security, for the economy, for the people of Israel.”

Labour leader Shelly Yacimovich, who will become the new leader of the Opposition in the Knesset, dismissed the coalition as “a pact of cowards and the most contemptible and preposterous zigzag in Israel’s political history.”

Hours before the announcement of the unity government, Israelis were expecting to go to the polls on Sept. 4.

Mr. Mofaz, who took over leadership of the Kadima party only two weeks ago, had repeatedly gone on the record as saying he would never go into a coalition with Mr. Netanyahu.

‘Not today. Not tomorrow and not after I lead Kadima’

“Not today. Not tomorrow and not after I lead Kadima,” he declared on his Facebook page during his party leadership campaign. “This is a bad, failed and insensitive government and Kadima under my leadership will replace it in the next elections.”

By threatening early elections, when public opinion polls suggested Kadima stood a chance of losing nearly half its 28 seats in the Knesset, Mr. Netanyahu held the whip hand in coalition negotiations.

Mr. Mofaz may now manage to get a small share of power and time to burnish his reputation with voters, but Mr. Netanyahu wins a series of tactical victories that free him to move toward the centre of Israeli politics, while strengthening his own position and possibly laying the groundwork to reabsorb elements of Kadima into the Likud party.

Kadima was created in November 2005 when then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon broke with right-wing elements in Likud over plans to unilaterally withdraw Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip.

By reuniting the two parties in a unity government, Mr. Netanyahu may be in a position to reinvigorate peace talks with the Palestinians.

“The Prime Minister, with Kadima at his side, is also now potentially capable of taking a more centrist position on dealings with the Palestinians and over settlements,” David Horovitz, editor of the online newspaper Times of Israel wrote Tuesday. “It is by no means clear that he wants to do so. But he has room for manoeuvre now, if he wishes to use it. And the Americans and the rest of the international community will be well aware of the fact.”

Under the new coalition agreement, Mr. Mofaz will be responsible for reopening peace talks.

Mr. Netanyahu hasn’t shown a great deal of enthusiasm for a peace deal, but before Tuesday his government depended on the support of hard-right groups that were reluctant to negotiate.

Mr. Mofaz has said he is willing to make an interim agreement on borders and security with the Palestinian Authority and that he feels conflict with the Palestinians poses a greater threat to Israel than Iran.

In the past, Mr. Mofaz has been a vocal critic of the possibility of Israel attacking Iranian nuclear sites on its own. He has argued the United States should lead any intervention.

Now, he will have a voice and a vote in any decision on the issue.

“Judging by the decision to bring Kadima into the government, Netanyahu either is not planning on bringing a possible strike [on Iran] to a vote or he believes that he has a majority in the Cabinet without Mofaz,” Yaakov Katz, the military analyst with the Jerusalem Post newspaper said.

“Another possibility is that Netanyahu believes that once Mofaz joins the government and is re-exposed to the latest classified material on Iran, the Kadima leader will change his mind.”

Online, where the audacity of defiance remains anonymous, tens of thousands of Chinese “netizens” rejoiced this week over news of the daring escape of blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng.

China’s censors rushed to block all Internet analysis of the case by shutting down social media discussions that used phrases such as Mr. Chen’s name, his initials, the words “U.S. embassy” or even “blind man.”

As usual, China’s innovative Internet users got around the problem, with a variety of deceptions to keep the debate raging. Some people referred to Mr. Chen as “A Bing,” a famous blind folk singer. But the censors caught on and blocked the phrase.

Some social media sites talked about “UA898,” the daily United Airlines Flight from Beijing to Washington. That too was censored.

One online “professor” relayed news of the drama by cryptically telling a fable of “a mole who was surrounded by a pack of wolves, but with the help of some mice he managed to escape. The wolves were furious.”

Others simply cheered from the sidelines, posting and reposting a quote from the 1994 movie, The Shawshank Redemption: “Some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright.”

REUTERS/Chris Wattie Current CRTC Chairman Konrad von Finckenstein

Mr. Chen’s escape and his dramatic fight for freedom have ignited a global debate over China’s human rights record. But it is also drawing attention to China’s tenacious dissidents — men and women who continue to risk torture and detention to defy the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr. Chen’s escape electrified China’s human rights activists and created an enthusiasm for protest that hasn’t been seen in China since thousands of university students openly challenged China’s leaders during the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests.

Mr. Chen’s escape “reads like a scene straight out of an action movie,” said Chai Ling, a key student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen movement.

“Under cover of night, a blind political activist slipped past dozens of watchful guards, crossed several barricades and climbed a wall to escape the confines of his own home. A network of volunteers guide him to Beijing.

“Chen Guangcheng’s story resonates deeply with me because I once similarly evaded capture by journeying across China in darkness alongside underground activists. When the authorities listed me among the ‘21 Most Wanted’ after crushing the Tiananmen Square movement, I knew I was running for my life.”

‘Pearl knew that the price of securing Chen’s freedom might be her own’

From 1989 to 1997 a network of activists in China and Hong Kong managed to run an underground railroad that smuggled up to 500 Chinese dissidents out of China.

They sent “escape teams” into China to provide fugitive dissidents with forged documents and disguises and on occasion used make-up artists from Hong Kong’s movie industry to help guide fugitives out.

Relying on high-speed smuggling boats, scrambler phones, night vision goggles and infrared signals, members of Operation Yellow Bird would regularly rendezvous with dissidents on the run, bring them across the border and fly them off to exile in Europe.

Fifteen of China’s top 21 Most Wanted student leaders were rescued by Operation Yellow Bird, including Ms. Chai.

While there is no formal link between Operation Yellow Bird and the small network of activists who shepherded Mr. Chen to safety in Beijing last week, there is a shared tradition of determined dissent and a web of personal acquaintances that stretch back to 1989.

One of the first people to know that Mr. Chen escaped from his informal house arrest in rural Shandong province was Pastor “Bob” Fu Xiqiu, founder of a Midland, Texas-based religious charity, ChinaAid.

Mr. Fu, 44, a former political activist from Liaocheng University in Shandong, participated in the 1989 Tiananmen protests and was jailed briefly in 1996 for holding underground church services in China.

He escaped China in 1997, travelling to Hong Kong with the aid of a network of secret Christian churches, when he feared China’s family planners might force his wife to have an abortion.

Mr. Fu said he knew of Mr. Chen’s escape three days before the Chinese security guards stationed in his family compound even realized the activist was gone.

He maintains regular contact with activists in China and had several conversations over the Internet on Skype with the network of friends who helped Mr. Chen flee to Beijing.

Five days after Mr. Chen’s escape, Mr. Fu helped post the “barefoot lawyer’s” YouTube video appeal to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, urging him to punish the municipal officials who had subjected his family to 20 months of house arrest and repeated beatings.

“Chen’s most passionate supporters were the Chinese ‘netizen’ community,” said Mr. Fu. “One netizen, He ‘Pearl’ Peirong, provided logistic support for Chen’s escape, picking him up in Shandong province and taking him to Beijing.”

A former English teacher turned political activist who lives in Nanjing in Jiangsu province, roughly 500 kilometres south of the village where Mr. Chen was held captive, Ms. He spearheaded an Internet campaign for his release.

Nine-time European champions Real Madrid and Chelsea, still waiting to win the trophy for the first time, took giant steps on Tuesday toward reaching the Champions League semi-finalsNICOSIA — Karim Benzema and Kaka scored late goals to give Real Madrid an emphatic 3-0 win at APOEL Nicosia in the Champions League quarter-final first leg on Tuesday.
The nine-time European champions dominated the match but APOEL, the first Cypriot side to reach the last 16 of Europe’s premier club competition, defended solidly to frustrate their Spanish opponents until the last 15 minutes.
The arrival of Kaka as a substitute midway through the second half created the breakthrough, the Brazilian producing a superb cross from the left for the diving Benzema to head powerfully home after 74 minutes.
In Lisbon, Ivory Coast international Salomon Kalou scored the only goal of the game in the second half as Chelsea won 1-0 at Benfica.
The Premier League side always appeared in control and finally earned its reward in the 75th minute when Kalou tapped the ball in from close range after good work down the right by Ramires and Fernando Torres.
Kaka slotted in Real's second goal from eight metres following a surging run down the left by his fellow substitute Marcelo and Benzema struck again in the last minute to put the La Liga leaders firmly on course for the semi-finals.
“It took us a long time to open the score but that had a lot to do with our opponents who played very well,” Real coach Jose Mourinho told reporters.
“They don’t have the outstanding individual talent that other teams in the Champions League have, but in terms of organization and character they are fantastic,” the Portuguese added.
“They created many difficulties and I think we won the game because we played well. What they did was fantastic, and we had to play at optimum strength to win, they were fantastic on defence and they deserve our respect.”
APOEL’s Brazilian defender Marcelo Oliveira was carried off on a stretcher after pulling his hamstring early in the match but the home side initially made light of his absence.
Benzema missed a golden opportunity to open the scoring late in the first half, the French striker inexplicably directing the ball over the bar from close range with the goal gaping.
APOEL failed to register a shot on the Real goal but the Spanish side became increasingly frustrated by their inability to break through.
Cristiano Ronaldo caused problems without going close to scoring and it needed the introduction of Kaka to provide the spark for Real.
The playmaker cleverly set up the first goal for Benzema with a pinpoint cross and clinically converted Marcelo’s cutback before Mesut Ozil crossed for Benzema to tap in his second.
APOEL coach Ivan Jovanovic said his side had become frustrated after the first goal.
“The truth is we were well organized, at least on defence, but certainly, some disappointment set in after the 75th minute. There was some disappointment and I would say afte the goal we lost some concentration,” he told Sigma Sports.
APOEL chairman Phivos Erotocritou said APOEL were proud of their achievements.
“We have our head held high. It has been really special, we are very proud that we got to this point. It is certainly not a result to be ashamed of, we are very very proud we got to this point.”
The second leg in Madrid takes place next Wednesday.
Olympique Marseille host Bayern Munich and Barcelona travel to AC Milan in the first legs of the other two quarter-finals on Wednesday.
<em>Reuters</em>

China’s Internet users have been protesting Mr. Chen’s detention for months, posting pictures of themselves wearing sunglasses similar to the blind lawyer’s on a “Free Guangcheng” website. They also staged a flash mob of couples, all wearing sunglasses, who descended on the centre of Linyi, a city near Mr. Chen’s home.

Ms. He regularly posted news of Mr. Chen’s detention on her web blog (http://pearlher.org) under the motto: “A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cage.”

She raised funds via social media sites and unsuccessfully organized campaigns to visit Mr. Chen’s family in Dongshigu village.

On at least two occasions, she was beaten and robbed by the guards who surrounded Mr. Chen’s home.

The night Mr. Chen escaped from his home, he had arranged a rendezvous site with Ms. He and she drove there to pick him up and take him to Beijing.

“Pearl drove 20 hours to meet Chen and fooled the village guards into letting her in,” said Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, a group opposed to forced abortion and human trafficking in China. “She disguised herself as a courier. Then she drove Chen another eight hours — still wet from his fall in the river — to safety in Beijing.”

The night news of Mr. Chen’s escape first broke, Ms. Littlejohn was in Dublin, Ireland, campaigning for the Chinese activist’s release and she sat up all night talking to Ms. He about the escapade on Skype.

“Their plan was so masterfully executed that the authorities did not realize Chen was gone for four days,” she said.

Ms. Littlejohn said Ms. He is a heroine, who may be paying dearly for her courage.

“Pearl knew that the price of securing Chen’s freedom might be her own,” she said. “She has not been heard from since and I am very concerned that she is being tortured. As the centre of this network that was protecting Chen, she would know everyone else and the Chinese Communist Party would have an interest in completely deactivating that entire network.”

“I am awed by the courage of those who helped Chen escape,” said Mr. Fu. “Pearl told me she is willing to die with Chen, because he is such a ‘pure hearted courageous person’.

“I was talking to her last week when she said ‘guo bao lai le’ that state security had arrived. Now, she is under arrest at an undisclosed location and her blog has been erased.”

One of Ms. He’s last blog posts reads, “On April 22 Chen Guangcheng escaped his village and contacted me. I drove him from Shandong to a safe place. He wants to live freely in his own country. He said he hopes to hold my hand and take me to his village one day.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/goodspeed-analysis-chen-guangchengs-escape-awakens-chinas-activists/feed0stdChen GuangchengChen GuangchengChen GuangchengGoodspeed Analysis: Activists fear U.S. may have been duped in deal to hand Chen Guangcheng over to Chinahttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/goodspeed-analysis-activists-fear-u-s-may-have-been-duped-in-deal-to-hand-chen-guangcheng-over-to-china
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After a week-long standoff that threatened to derail top-level diplomatic talks, Chinese and U.S. officials appeared to reach an agreement Wednesday to allow blind dissident Chen Guangcheng to leave the U.S. embassy, reunite with his family and continue to live freely in China.

But the agreement, carved out during four days of tense negotiations, apparently unravelled within hours of Mr. Chen being escorted to a local hospital by U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke.

Chinese officials refuse to acknowledge the existence of any understanding and gave no public guarantee of Mr. Chen’s safety, while Chinese dissidents angrily question whether Mr. Chen left of his own free will or was coerced by Chinese government threats against his family.

One news report said that within hours of leaving the safety of the U.S. embassy, Mr. Chen said he only left because Chinese officials had threatened to beat his wife to death.

According to the Associated Press, Mr. Chen said in an interview from his hospital room that he now fears for his safety and wants to leave the country.

The delicate diplomatic duet that was supposed to have defused the crisis caused by Mr. Chen’s escape last week from informal house arrest in rural Shandong province and his seeking asylum at the U.S. embassy in Beijing may now become a public relations nightmare.

Something may have changed the moment Mr. Chen was in the custody of Chinese officials. Human rights activists are raising concerns U.S. diplomats may have been duped into handing Mr. Chen over.

“I am increasingly getting the sense that the reassurances the U.S. got from China over Chen’s future were less than they make it sound,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based senior Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch.

“I’m somewhat surprised by the U.S. government’s willingness to accept the Chinese government’s assurances or even to get Hillary Clinton to work for Chen’s safety in the long term. It seems they’ve taken a huge risk with this.”

The incident risks becoming a huge embarrassment to the U.S. with Mr. Chen reportedly telling CNN that U.S. officials pushed him to leave the embassy.

“The embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me in the hospital, but this afternoon as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone,” Mr. Chen told CNN by phone.

“I would like to say to President Obama — please do everything you can to get our family out.”

Earlier Wednesday, U.S. officials had reported that Mr. Chen, a self-taught “barefoot lawyer,” who campaigned against the forced abortions and sterlizations that are part of China’s one-child policy, had agreed to leave the shelter of the U.S. embassy after Chinese officials offered a series of unprecedented assurances.

According to officials involved in the negotiations, the agreement would have allowed Mr. Chen to relocate to another city to attend university while continuing to live in China free of harassment.

The U.S. officials say they were assured they could check in on Mr. Chen to see if he was still being treated fairly.

They stressed that Mr. Chen “made clear from the beginning that he wanted to remain in China, and that he wanted his stay in the United States Embassy to be temporary.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to Mr. Chen by telephone before he left the embassy Wednesday and U.S officials said Mr. Chen told her in broken English: “I want to kiss you.”

Mr. Locke accompanied Mr. Chen to the nearby Chaoyang Hospital, where he was to receive a check-up for injuries he suffered during his escape before being reunited with his wife and two children, including a son who he has not seen in two years.

Ms. Clinton, who arrived in China Wednesday, along with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, for an annual two-day “strategic and economic dialogue” with top Chinese officials, issued a statement saying: “I am pleased that we were able to facilitate Chen Guangcheng’s stay and departure from the U.S. embassy in a way that reflected his choices and our values.

“Mr. Chen has a number of understandings with the Chinese government about his future, including the opportunity to pursue higher education in a safe environment.

“Making these commitments a reality is the next crucial task. The United States government and the American people are committed to remaining engaged with Mr. Chen and his family in the days, weeks, and years ahead.”

Mr. Chen’s lawyer, Li Jinsong, also told reporters he had talked to his client by phone and said Mr. Chen was “very happy and wants to hug all his friends”.

Within hours, however, friends of Mr. Chen were reporting they were unable to visit him in hospital and had been turned away by police guarding the hospital’s VIP wing.

Zeng Jinyan, a Beijing activist and wife of Mr. Chen’s best friend, released a message on Twitter claiming Mr. Chen did not leave the U.S. embassy of his own accord but only after his wife and children were told they would be sent back to Shandong province.

According to the Texas-based religious rights advocacy group ChinaAid, Ms. Zeng’s Twitter message reads: “Guangcheng called me and told me that he didn’t say, according to media, ‘I want to kiss you’ to Secretary Clinton. What he actually said was ‘I want to see you.’”

Later she tweeted: “Chen Guangcheng told me for the first time that his whole family wanted to leave.”

For its part China’s foreign ministry is demanding an apology from the United States for sheltering Mr. Chen in the first place.

“What the U.S. needs to do is to stop misleading the public and stop making every excuse to shift responsibility and conceal its own wrongdoing,” foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said.

He insisted Washington should not “interfere” in China’s domestic affairs and urged U.S. officials to “take necessary measures to prevent a similar incident.”

The confusion and controversy surrounding Mr. Chen has the potential to derail U.S.-China relations just as U.S. President Barack Obama is entering a re-election campaign and as China’s leaders are redoubling efforts to suppress dissent ahead of a wholesale generational leadership change slated for October.

Having become something of a cult figure for Chinese dissidents through his original escape, Mr. Chen could rapidly become something of a political martyr internationally.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/goodspeed-analysis-activists-fear-u-s-may-have-been-duped-in-deal-to-hand-chen-guangcheng-over-to-china/feed0stdBlind activist Chen Guangcheng, second left, being accompanied by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, right, and U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke on Wednesday.Goodspeed Analysis: Bo Xilai scandal a symbol of corruption that has surged with Chinese economyhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/goodspeed-analysis-bo-xilai-scandal-a-symbol-of-corruption-that-has-surged-with-chinese-economy
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The Chinese call it hei shehui or “black society” — a vast flourishing underworld of crime, corruption and greed that has become the most pervasive and dangerous side effect of China’s economic miracle.

It is supposed to be secret, but it is everywhere.

Officials have expensive foreign cars, endless banquets, foreign trips and generous rounds of drinks. Bureaucrats use their family connections and public influence to build private fortunes; public funds are diverted into stock and real estate speculation; farms and old apartments are illegally expropriated and resold to developers.

Factories bribe officials to get supplies; truck drivers are constantly stopped for “safety inspections” that can be avoided with a “special fine;” police officers demand money for residency permits; railway ticket sellers need extra cash to find a seat on a train and farmers give bureaucrats packets filled with money during the Chinese New Year to make sure they get enough seeds to plant their next crop.

“Corruption is something you find across all elements in China,” says Brock University professor Charles Burton, a former diplomat in China. “It’s hard to find any official in China whose lifestyle is consistent with their civil service salary.”

Last summer, the People’s Bank of China briefly published a report on its Internet website that looked at how corrupt Chinese officials transfer assets overseas.

Quoting statistics compiled by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the study said more than 18,000 Communist party and government officials had fled China between 1990 and 2008 with more than $123-billion in tainted money.

The missing funds equalled China’s entire education budget from 1978 to 1998 and they were generally funnelled into the United States, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands through offshore bank accounts or as property investments.

Within hours of the reports’ appearance, it was purged from public view and has never been seen again.

AFP filesMuch like Dennis Hopper himself, his home had personality. The Venice, Calif., compound belonging to the late actor, artist and photographer flaunted a 5,000-square-foot industrial main house that resembled a tin barn; it was designed by Brian Murphy.
Other features included a pool house, a guest cottage and three two-storey condominiums (fashioned by Frank Gehry) for a total of seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms and 9,595 sq. ft. of living space.
It sounds like quite the sweet pad, but the compound actually sat on the market for two years. Initially, the plan was to sever the property — the art barn was listed at US$3.96-million and the three condos ranged in price from $750,000 to US$1.05-million. But the whole kit and caboodle recently sold for US$5-million, <em>The Huffington Post</em> reports.
[np-related /]

Corruption is so endemic in China it helped trigger the massive public protests that ended in the bloody Tiananmen Massacre in 1989.

But in the years since, corruption has surged right along with the exponential growth of China’s economy.

A recent study by Global Financial Integrity, a Washington-based research and advocacy organization working to curtail money laundering in developing countries, said China ranks first in the world in illicit financial flows. It estimates that between 2000 and 2009, China exported more than $2.74-trillion in illicit funds — more than five times that of drug-dealing Mexico, the second-place offender.

“Unimaginable sums of money are illegally leaving China every single day,” writes Sarah Freitas, an economist at Global Financial Integrity.

Now, as China reels from its biggest political scandal in two decades with the sudden demotion of Bo Xilai, a powerful Politburo member and Chinese Communist Party secretary in the mega city of Chongqing, there is a renewed focus on the rampant corruption that pervades China.

Mr. Bo, a “princeling” of the Chinese Communist party, whose father was one of the party’s founding revolutionary “immortals,” was seen as a key figure in the next generation of China’s leadership. But early this month he was stripped of all his public posts and his wife was accused of involvement in the “intentional homicide” of a British businessman, who had been close to her family.

‘At this stage of its development, China offers too many temptations, and the collusion of money and power is commonplace’

The rumours and comments surrounding the case have once again turned the spotlight on corruption at the highest levels of China’s government. Allegations of “serious disciplinary violations” by Mr. Bo have been matched by reports his wife, a successful lawyer, had shifted millions of dollars overseas.

Their son, a 24-year old student at Harvard University who attended prestigious and expensive Harrow in Britain, has a reputation for driving expensive sports cars and registered a technology company with $320,000 in start-up-capital in 2010.

Mr. Bo’s brother was, until he resigned this week, a multi-millionaire vice-chairman of China Everbright International, one of China’s biggest state-owned conglomerates. A sister-in-law owns a stake in a printing company that was reportedly valued at $400-million and, according to the Bloomberg news agency, Mr. Bo’s wife “controlled a web of businesses from Beijing to Hong Kong to the Caribbean worth at least $126-million.”

Not bad for a public servant who officially earns less than $26,000 a year and who boasted his wife is a stay-at-home mother.

It is not a coincidence Mr. Bo’s downfall was accompanied by an unsigned editorial in the People’s Daily newspaper that lambasted officials who use their families and mistresses to send money overseas.

A similar editorial in the feisty business magazine Caixin warned last week: “[Bo’s arrest] isn’t a typical case of graft. Nevertheless, it illustrates the irrefutable truth that unchecked power leads to corruption.”

“As a rule, corruption thrives in an authoritarian regime,” the magazine said. “A leader with exceptional self-discipline may be able to stay above board. But, at this stage of its development, China offers too many temptations, and the collusion of money and power is commonplace.”

China is full of tales of powerful top officials who destroyed themselves through decadence and greed.

China boasts the world’s most extensive and expensive high-speed rail network and is spending $120-billion in the next few years to expand it. But when two high-speed trains collided last year, killing 32 people, an investigation into the accident resulted in the firing of the country’s railway minister.

Nick Procaylo/Postmedia News<strong>By Rob Maadi</strong>
CLEARWATER, Fla. — When the Philadelphia Phillies overhauled their bench in the offseason, they added several veterans with plenty of experience.
Some of those backups might end up being regulars.
Injuries to Ryan Howard and Chase Utley mean the Phillies need a new right side of the infield until the two all-stars return. Utilityman Michael Martinez also is injured, opening up another spot on the roster.
It's likely the Phillies will break camp with only one bench player - catcher Brian Schneider - back from last year. John Mayberry Jr. was a role player last season, but he'll be starting at first base or left field.
Jim Thome, Ty Wigginton, Laynce Nix were the three biggest additions to Philadelphia's bench. Scott Podsednik and Juan Pierre are competing for the last spot in the outfield.
[np-related]
Thome is one of eight players with 600 career homers. Wigginton and Podsednik have been all-stars during their career. Pierre has 2,020 career hits. Nix is coming off a season in which he had a career-best 16 homers.
That's an impressive bench except the Phillies are going to need a few of those guys to play a lot more than just spot duty.
"The way I look it is that it's our job to come to the yard ready to play every day and when the manager calls upon you, help your team win the game," Wigginton said. "That's been my attitude whether I knew that I was showing up and batting in a regular spot or whatever. It's our job to be ready every single day and that's been my mindset."
Wigginton is a career .265 with 158 homers in 10 seasons with six teams. He almost came to Philadelphia before signing with Baltimore in 2009. A year later, he had 22 homers, 76 RBIs and played in the Midsummer Classic.
His versatility helps the Phillies because he can play first base and third base. Manager Charlie Manuel may play Wigginton at first when Howard is out or use him at third to spell Placido Polanco. He also can play third with Polanco moving to second to fill in for Utley.
"I've never worried about playing time throughout my career," Wigginton said. "If you produce, they're going to find a spot for you and that's how my career has gone. Everywhere I went, they say they don't know where or how they are going to use me and I end up getting my at-bats. It boils down to if you help your team win ball games, you'll be in."
Unless the Phillies acquire another second baseman, rookie prospect Freddy Galvis may be the starter on opening day. Galvis has been impressive this spring and his transition from shortstop has been smooth.
"Freddy is a good player, he's got good instincts, he knows how to play," Manuel said. "He definitely makes very few mistakes in a game. He's sure-handed. And he likes to play, too."
The 41-year-old Thome gives the Phillies a left-handed power hitter off the bench. He's also trying to adapt to playing first base for the first time since 2005. Thome has been getting re-acclimated with the position after serving primarily as a designated hitter since the Phillies traded him to make room for Howard after the `05 season.
"In the real world, I'd like to play every day, but I understand where I'm at and I understand my body and where it's at right now," Thome said. "I think the player never loses his heart, though. You never lose the desire and the heart to want to play and be out there. Again, Charlie is the boss. He is ultimately the guy who is going to have to determine in his mind how much he's going to want me to play and it's up to me as the player to get ready for that."
Nix could be part of a platoon in left field, a position he started 59 games last season with Washington. Podsednik or Pierre also could see time in left.
Mayberry had a breakout half-season last year, hitting .273 with 15 homers and 49 RBIs in only 267 at-bats. He probably would be the regular left fielder if Howard wasn't hurt. Mayberry can play first and all three outfield positions.
"Just getting more consistent at-bats definitely helped me out becoming more comfortable and getting in the rhythm of the game," Mayberry said.
Whether they watch from the dugout or have increased playing time, the bench guys will be pivotal to Philadelphia's success this season.

According to Central China TV, Zhang Shuguang, the former deputy chief engineer at the Ministry of Railways, is accused of having bank deposits abroad that amounted to $2.8-billion. Railway Minister Liu Zhijun, who was also fired, was said to have walked away with $155-million.

Lai Changxing, once considered China’s most-wanted fugitive, went on trial early in April, accused of using cash, liquor and prostitutes to bribe officials while he ran the country’s largest-ever smuggling ring.

He unsuccessfully battled deportation in Canada for a decade, insisting he risked torture and execution in China, if convicted of masterminding a $10-billion network that smuggled everything from cigarettes to cars to oil and allegedly bribed dozens of government officials between 1996 and 1999.

China’s top bureaucrats generally appear to be bland but their ability to collect and spend secret fortunes is staggering.

In February 2011 the Chinese Internet buzzed with fascination over the story, published in a respected business magazine Caijing that described the sexual and business adventures of billionaire businesswoman Li Wei.

A Vietnamese refugee who was raised in southern Yunnan province, she made a fortune in tobacco, real estate and finance by serving as the mistress to more than 15 top Chinese officials.

Her network of guanxi relationships stretched through Yunnan, Guangdong, Shandong and Beijing and at the height of her power she owned 20 companies and over 200 gas stations.

Eventually she was arrested for income tax evasion in 2006, but rapidly turned state’s evidence and testified at the trials of her former lovers.

Among her conquests were: Li Jiating, the former governor of Yunnan province, who was sentenced to death for embezzling millions; Chen Tonghai, the ex-chairman of China’s second-largest oil company, Sinopec, who was given a suspended death sentence for taking $30-million in bribes; Liu Zhihua, a former vice-mayor of Beijing who supervised construction of the Beijing Olympics and was sentenced to death for taking $1.45-million in bribes; Zheng Shaodong, the former head of China’s Economic Criminal Investigation Bureau who was sentenced to death for corruption and Huang Songyou, a deputy head of the Supreme Court who is serving a life sentence for receiving $1-million worth of bribes.

Ms. Li was released from jail in late 2010 and is said now to be living in Hong Kong, where she continues to enjoy her wealth and may, according to the magazine, possess a diary that could implicate many more Chinese officials.

“Failure to contain endemic corruption among Chinese officials poses one of the most serious threats to the nation’s future economic and political stability,” says Minxin Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in California.

In a 2007 study on corruption in China for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Mr. Pei estimated 10% of all government spending, contracts and transactions are used as kickbacks and bribes or simply stolen.

“The odds of a corrupt official going to jail are less than 3%, making corruption a high-return, low-risk activity,” he said.

Most prominent corruption cases in China, like the Bo scandal, are often the outgrowth of power struggles within the Chinese Communist Party, with competing factions using the “war of corruption” as a tool to eliminate or weaken rivals.

No one is even trying to maintain the pretense of peace in Sudan and South Sudan these days. Sporadic skirmishes and border shootouts are on the verge of becoming all-out war and the threat is resurrecting fears of a Darfur-like disaster for 10s of thousands of refugees.

A day after South Sudan, Africa’s youngest state, became the 188th member of the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday, the Arab League was scrambling to call an emergency meeting into the growing violence between Sudan and South Sudan.

South Sudanese troops continue to occupy the oil town of Heglig, on the disputed border of South Kordofan state, fighting off air raids by Sudanese jets and counter-attacks by the Sudanese army.

Related

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, dressed in an army uniform plastered with battle ribbons and medals, travelled to the capital of North Kordofan Thursday and praised the revival of a “spirit of jihad” in his country, while vowing to wage a “decisive battle” against South Sudan.

Troops from both countries staged border battles in at least four locations Thursday in some of the worst fighting to plague the region since two million people died during two decades of civil war between 1983 and 2005.

“Sudan and South Sudan are teetering on the brink of all-out war from which neither would benefit,” the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says in a report released Thursday. “Increasingly angry rhetoric, support for each other’s rebels, poor command and control and brinkmanship, risk escalating limited and contained conflict into a full-scale confrontation.”

EBRAHIM HAMID/AFP/Getty ImagesChef Jean Paul Lourdes plates his dessert dish Cataleya, a combination of his love of chocolate and his wife.

Less than a year after Sudan and South Sudan agreed to separate, their fragile peace has been shattered by a failure to resolve their post-secession security arrangements, borders, citizenship rules or income-sharing arrangements on oil exports.

Peace talks in Ethiopia have foundered and the conflict widened when Sudan used force to seize control of the disputed Abyei region last May and began using local militias to drive nearly 80,000 Nubian refugees from South Kordofan and the Blue Nile areas.

‘These people don’t understand and we will give them the final lesson by force’

When Sudan arbitrarily imposed stiff transit fees on South Sudan to ship oil through a northern pipeline to Port Sudan, South Sudan shut down its entire 350,000-barrel-a-day oil industry in January and began negotiations with Kenya to build a new pipeline to the port of Lamu, through Ethiopia and Djibouti.

Oil exports had supplied South Sudan with 98% of its government budget and provided Sudan with 55% of its national revenues.

Sudan had its oil revenue cut in half when South Sudan seceded, but it continued to export oil from Heglig, which accounted for 50% of its remaining oil revenue.

That income was abruptly cut off when South Sudan attacked and seized the oil town on April 10, claiming Khartoum was using it as a base from which it staged air and militia raids on the south.

Now, Gen. Bashir is threatening all-out war to regain Heglig.

“These people don’t understand and we will give them the final lesson by force,” he told troops preparing to depart to the South Sudan border on Thursday. “We will not give them an inch of our country and whoever extends his hand on Sudan, we will cut it off.”

The war of words, piled on top of decades of mutual distrust and bad faith, now threatens to reopen Africa’s longest-running civil war.

“A game of ‘chicken’ appears to be underway, in which both sides embark on risky strategies in the hope that the other will blink first. If neither does, the outcome will be disastrous for both,” the International Crisis Group said.

The United Nations, the United States and the European Union have all criticized South Sudan’s occupation of Heglig and denounced Sudan’s continuing air strikes against South Sudan. But there is little sign of a possible diplomatic breakthrough.

‘A game of ‘chicken’ appears to be underway, in which both sides embark on risky strategies in the hope that the other will blink first’

Gen. Bashir, who is already wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Darfur, may now be fighting for his political life in Sudan.

The country’s economy has tanked since South Sudan separated and he is struggling with separate insurrections in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile.

Given the track record of last year’s Arab Spring, he may well fear open rebellion in Khartoum.

“Bashir’s fall could trigger a wild scramble by multiple armed actors for control of Khartoum and other parts of the country that would be hard, if not impossible, to restrain,” the International Crisis Group warned Thursday.

Still, if northern and southern parts of Sudan return to war, many experts believe the new conflict could be among Africa’s worst.

“Given the brutally indiscriminate ways in which Khartoum has previously chosen to wage war on the people of the South — as well as of Darfur, Blue Nile, and South Kordofan — we should expect huge civilian casualties, massive human displacement, and intolerable assaults on civilians in the North who are ‘ethnically Southern,’ ” said Eric Reeves, a Sudan researcher and analyst from Smith College in Massachusetts.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/goodspeed-analysis-sudan-and-south-sudan-on-brink-of-all-out-war-over-oil-disputes/feed0stdSupporters stand behind Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir as he speaks at a rally in Khartoum Tuesday.Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during his visit to the Northern Kordofan town of El-Obeid Thursday.Goodspeed Analysis: Tension mounts in Egypt as Islamists tighten griphttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/goodspeed-analysis-tension-mounts-in-egypt-as-islamists-tighten-grip
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Egypt lurched toward another political crisis Monday as Islamist parties that dominate parliament tightened their grip on the country and moved to seize control of the assembly that will write Egypt’s next constitution.

Liberals and leftist parties, who initiated the public protests that toppled former dictator Hosni Mubarak last year, reacted by vowing to boycott the constitution-writing process and are now calling for a renewal of street demonstrations.

In the meantime, former Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who was selected as Mr. Mubarak’s vice-president just days before the former dictator was forced from power, is now said to be actively considering running for president in elections scheduled for May.

News of Mr. Suleiman’s prospective candidacy broke just two days after Egypt’s ruling military council clashed publicly with the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and accused Islamist leaders of trying to “pressure the armed forces and its Supreme Council with the intention of making them abandon their national mission to rule the country during the transitional period.”

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The military and the Islamist movement are the two most powerful forces in Egypt’s post-revolution politics, but the two sides are increasingly coming into conflict.

Egypt’s Islamists have become increasingly assertive since the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), won 47% of the seats in recent parliamentary elections, while an alliance of ultra-conservative Islamists, the Salafi Nour party, won about 25% of the seats.

Lately, the FJP has been pressing the ruling military council to withdraw its support from the appointed government of Prime Minister Kamal Ganzuri and urging it to appoint a new, Muslim Brotherhood-led government.

On Saturday, the FJP launched a scathing attack on the military, accusing it of backing a failed interim government tainted by unrest, judicial interference, stalled reforms, fuel shortages and dwindling foreign currency reserves.

REUTERS/Amr Abdallah DalshProtesters shout slogans from a cart during a rally against the formation of a constituent assembly.

“Keeping this government as we approach presidential elections. . . which raises suspicions over the fairness of these elections, as well as the general decline of affairs, are things we cannot remain silent or patient over,” the FJP declared on its internet website.

“If anyone intends to recreate the former corrupt regime with new faces, the people are willing to move in order to revive their revolution and protect their ship from sinking at the hands of people with no sense of responsibility,” the Islamist party declared.

The ruling military council shot back with an official statement on Sunday that accused the Islamists of “baseless slander.”

“The Egyptian population knows well who protected its dignity and pride, and who always put the people’s best interest before anything else,” the military council’s statement said. “The armed forces and its council were keen to adhere to that code and not deviate from it as a result of attempts at provocation.

“We understand that the performance of the government might not satisfy the expectations of the people at this critical stage, but we emphasise that the nation’s interest is our foremost priority, and we shall spare no effort to pass through this tough stage.”

Then, in a veiled threat that hinted at past moves to ban the Muslim Brotherhood, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces added, “We ask everyone to be aware of the lessons of history to avoid mistakes from a past we do not want to return to, and to look towards the future.”

‘It’s ridiculous: A constitution being written by one force and one force alone’

The confrontation may be a prelude to weeks of political struggle in Egypt, as the country prepares to draw up a new constitution and stage presidential elections on May 23-24.

If necessary, a run-off election will be held in early June and Egypt’s new president could take office by June 21.

Egypt’s military, which took over running the government after Mr. Mubarak stepped down in February 2011, has said it will hand over power to an elected civilian government, possibly next year, once Egyptians vote in a referendum to endorse a new constitution.

But the battle to decide who will draw up a draft constitution that will determine the balance of power between Egypt’s previously all-powerful president and the Islamist-controlled parliament, is now set to ignite a new round of public protest.

Last week, Egypt’s Islamist parties decided to allocate nearly 70% of the 100 seats in the constitutional assembly to their own members and supporters, insisting that simply reflects the results of last year’s parliamentary elections.

That has infuriated liberal, leftist and secular parties who insist the constitutional assembly should reflect a broad range of the Egyptian public, not just parliament’s current political majority.

Sunday, when Egypt’s parliament released the names of members appointed to the constitutional assembly, there were only six women and six members from Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority on the 100-member panel.

“It’s ridiculous: A constitution being written by one force and one force alone. We tried our best but there was no use,” said Naguib Sawiris, the founder of the liberal Free Egyptians Party.

‘We are going to continue struggling for a secular Egypt in the streets’

Eight members of the constitutional assembly resigned in protest Monday, saying they fear the Islamist dominated body may now try to produce a constitution that entrenches Sharia law in Egypt at the expense of decades of secular tradition and respect for the rights of religious minorities and women.

“We are going to continue struggling for a secular Egypt in the streets,” Mohammed Abou el Ghar, head of the Social Democratic Party said Monday, as he resigned from the constitutional assembly.

A coalition of 15 movements and groups, calling themselves the “Constitution for All Egyptians Front” have called for street protests in Cairo Tuesday.

The Union of Revolutionary Youth is calling for a “million-man” march Friday to protest the Muslim Brotherhood’s “use of the same techniques employed by the National Democratic Party” (Mr. Mubarak’s former ruling party).

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/goodspeed-analysis-tension-mounts-in-egypt-as-islamists-tighten-grip/feed0stdA protester holds up a placard with the logos of Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party, left, and ousted president Hosni Mubarak's defunct National Democratic Party during a rally against the formation of a constituent assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution outside the Cairo convention centre Saturday.Protesters shout slogans from a cart during a rally against the formation of a constituent assembly.Goodspeed Analysis: Syrian revolt slides towards Lebanon-style morasshttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/goodspeed-analysis-syria-teetering-on-the-edge-of-civil-war
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As Syria’s uprising enters its second year, it is increasingly beginning to resemble the 15-year long civil war that tormented neighbouring Lebanon and the decade long insurgency that ravaged Iraq.

Gunfire and rocket-propelled grenade blasts rattled the heavily guarded al-Mezze district of Damascus for several hours early Monday in what has been described as the most violent gun battle in the Syrian capital since the start of the revolt.

As usual there are conflicting reports on the number of dead and wounded with government-controlled news agencies saying three “terrorists” and a member of the security services were killed during a police raid on a rebel hide out.

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The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has served as a clearing house for most casualty counts, said at least two Syrian soldiers were killed and another 18 security personnel injured during what amounted to a four hour battle.

“These clashes were the most violent and the closest to the security forces headquarters in Damascus since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution,” said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the London-based group.

One unconfirmed report by Syrian activists claimed members of the rebel Free Syrian Army tried to stage a series of kidnappings in the neighbourhood and then took refugee in an apartment building during an extended firefight.

What is most significant, however, may be the location of Monday’s clash. The al-Mezze district of Damascus is a rich residential area located on the western edge of the capital, just south of Syria’s presidential palace.

Monday’s fighting is said to have been close to the Swiss embassy and the home of Major General Assef Shawkat, the deputy chief of staff for Syria’s security forces and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brother-in-law.

Several security installations including Syria’s Ministry of Information and the ruling Ba’ath party’s newspaper are also nearby.
As an added shock to Mr. Assad’s supporters, Monday’s attack came just two days after a double car bomb killed at least 27 people in the heart of Damascus in a targeted attack Saturday on Syria’s criminal police headquarters and an air force intelligence centre.

Another car bomb in Aleppo, Syria’s chief commercial city, killed two people and wounded dozens of others on Sunday when attackers targeted a state security office and a Christian church.

No one has claimed responsibility for the bombings, which are similar to attacks in Damascus and Aleppo in December and February.

But the imagery of the attack’s aftermath — bomb-shattered buildings stripped of their facades, the twisted wrecks of cars smeared with blood and rescue workers collecting bodies and body parts — are all too familiar in the Middle East.

Lebanon’s civil war, which ran from 1975 to 1990, cost 230,000 dead, a million wounded and created another million refugees. Iraq’s bloody insurgency, following the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, cost an estimated 115,500 dead civilians.

Now Syria, a crucial geopolitical hinge in the Middle East with a combustible mix of religious faiths, sects and ethnic groups, appears to be sliding ever deeper into conflict. The nation that used to boast of being the “beating heart of Arab nationalism” has become the bloodiest victim of last year’s Arab Spring.

“The horrors of such a war might even exceed the brutal reassertion of Assad’s control, and would cause spillover into Syria’s neighbours — Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel — that could be disastrous for them and for American interests in the Middle East,” says a study released last week by the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The ramifications of a prolonged war are complex and frightening and raise the possibility of regional power shifts, proxy wars and spreading instability.

While sectarian divisions played no real role in the early anti-government protests in Syria, after a year of repression and escalating conflict, the targets of violence have shifted as combatants fight along sectarian and ethnic lines.

Two weeks ago, James Clapper, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, told a congressional committee al-Qaeda linked terrorists are believed to be conducting suicide bombings in Syria and may have infiltrated opposition forces fighting the government.

“We believe al-Qaeda in Iraq is extending its reach into Syria,” he said.

If Osama bin Laden’s successor Ayman al-Zawahri can manage to gain a foothold in Syria, he might be able to rejuvenate al-Qaeda and establish a new base of operations that is strategically located near Israel and Jordan.

“Syria is a strategic centerpiece for al-Qaeda in many ways,” said Juan Zarate, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This is an opportunity, I think, for al-Qaeda, in its own mind at least, to re-assert itself in a way that puts it at the centre of chaos and civil war, and begins to shape a future of al-Qaeda that looks perhaps different from the past but one that has Syria at its core.”

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/goodspeed-analysis-syria-teetering-on-the-edge-of-civil-war/feed0stdA Turkish protester holds a banner during a demonstration against the government of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad at Beyazit Square in Istanbul, on March 18, 2012.Goodspeed Analysis: Syria a chemical weapon ‘powder keg ready to explode,’ experts fearhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/peter-goodspeed-syria-a-chemical-weapon-powder-keg-ready-to-explode-experts-fear
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While United Nations officials said Tuesday that more than 8,000 people have died in a year of political unrest in Syria, some experts fear the collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime may actually be worse than the threat of all-out civil war.

The sudden demise of Syria’s dictator has the potential to expose the Middle East and the world to a massive new threat from chemical and biological weapons.

Syria has been stockpiling chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction since the late 1970s and is widely believed to possess one of the world’s largest inventories of mustard blister agent, sarin nerve gas and possibly VX nerve agent.

“The country is a chemical powder keg ready to explode,” says a report released last week by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

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Hundreds of tonnes of chemical weapons, chemical warheads for medium-range, Soviet-built Scud B and C ballistic missiles, air-dropped bombs and conventional artillery shells are believed to be stored in about 50 sites around Syria.

At least four chemical weapon production facilities are located in the towns of al-Safira (12 kilometres southeast of Aleppo), Hama, Homs and Latakia, while massive munition storage depots are located at Khan Abu Shamat (northeast of Damascus) and Furqlus (just east of Homs).

“The situation in Syria is unprecedented,” said Charles Blair of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in a recent report for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. “Never before has a WMD-armed country fallen into civil war.”

While there was considerable concern internationally that Libyan chemical weapons and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles might fall into the hands of terrorists during last year’s fight to depose Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the threat posed by Syria is exponentially higher.

“The Libyan chemical stockpile consisted of several tonnes of aging mustard gas leaking from a half-dozen containers that would have been impossible to utilize as weapons,” Mr. Blair said. “Syria likely has one of the largest and most sophisticated chemical weapons programs in the world.

.Theo Fleury's victim impact statement: "At a young and very impressionable age, I was stalked, preyed upon and sexually assaulted over 150 times by an adult my family and I trusted completely"

“Should Syria devolve into full-blown civil war, the security of its WMD should be of profound concern, as sectarian insurgents and Islamist terrorist groups may stand poised to seize chemical and perhaps even biological weapons.”

Defections from Syria’s armed forces and attacks on government weapons storage depots by rebel soldiers all pose a threat to chemical and biological weapon stockpiles. Deadly chemical and biological agents could escape into the atmosphere as the result of an attack or the weapons themselves could fall into the hands of insurgents or terrorists.

“If Syria collapses into chaos or the army splits between Assad’s fellow Alawites and the majority Sunnis, a key question will be the fate of these chemical weapons and their delivery systems,” said former CIA officer Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution. “Terrorist groups, such as Assad’s friends, Hezbollah and Hamas, would love to get sarin warheads.”

At least six terrorist organizations have long maintained headquarters in Syria over the years, including Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Since the country plunged into conflict last year, al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters from Iraq have also been streaming into Syria at the request of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

“The question is when, not if,” the Assad government is brought down, said Israel’s armed forces planning chief Major General Amir Eshel. “And the big question is what is going to come the day after.”

“The immediate concern is the huge stockpiles of chemicals, biologicals, strategic capabilities, that are still going into Syria,” he said. “I don’t know who is going to own those the day after.”

Should Mr. Assad feel his grip on power is slipping, he could easily transfer some of his chemical and biological weapons to allies such as Iran and Hezbollah.

“Should centralized authority crumble in Syria, it seems highly unlikely that the country’s 50 chemical storage and manufacturing facilities — and possibly biological weapon repositories — can be secured,” said Mr. Blair. “The U.S. Defence Department recently estimated that it would take more than 75,000 U.S. military personnel to guard Syria’s chemical weapons. This is, of course, if they could arrive before any WMD were transferred or looted — a highly unlikely prospect.”

In the early days of the Iraq War, in spite of the presence of more than 200,000 coalition troops, insurgents managed to make off with more than 330 tonnes of military-grade high explosives that were used in improvised explosive devices for the next decade.

Last week, General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a U.S. Senate committee that U.S. officials are keeping a close watch on Syrian army defections and the command structure of the Syrian army “to make sure they [chemical weapons] are still under the control of the regime.”

Using satellites and other technology to track Syria’s arsenal, U.S. officials are also reported to be making plans with regional allies to develop a strategy to secure the weapon stockpiles in an emergency.

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported U.S. and Jordanian officials are developing plans for Jordan’s special operations forces, acting as part of a larger Arab League peacekeeping mission, to go into Syria to secure more than a dozen weapons sites.

“The best possible outcome, in terms of controlling Syria’s enormous WMD arsenal, would be for Assad to maintain power,” said Mr. Blair of the FAS. “But such an outcome seems increasingly implausible.”
National Postpgoodspeed@nationalpost.com

For decades Burma has seethed with the suppressed rage of a country riddled with poverty and oppression, tragedy and terror. But Maung Thura, a comedian and political dissident better known as “Zarganar” (Tweezers) has always made people laugh at their repressive military dictators.

His biting satire cost him 11 years in prison and turned him into the country’s second most famous opposition figure, after Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Bald, energetic and with a deep raspy voice that constantly rumbles with laughter, Zarganar specializes in wicked puns and double-entendres in farcical routines that expose the failures of Burma’s military governments.

Trained as a dentist, hence his stage name of “Tweezers,” he became famous when as a university student his performances regularly ridiculed General Ne Win’s government.

While Burma cowered in fear, Zarganar made people smile, telling them of a lucky man who managed to get a passport and traveled to India to see a dentist.

“Don’t you have dentists in Burma?” the Indian dentist asks.

“Yes, we do,” the patient replies, “but we aren’t allowed to open our mouths.”

Zarganar was jailed for years for simply saying what was on people’s minds.

He spent five years in solitary confinement and was once locked in a dog kennel in Insein Prison. He was also beaten and tortured.

In 2006, he was banned indefinitely from performing publicly and prohibited from participating in any kind of entertainment-related work.

Two years later, when Burma was ravaged by Cyclone Nargis, which killed 140,000 people, Zarganar organized hundreds of entertainers to deliver relief supplies to victims. He was immediately jailed after he criticized the military government’s incompetence and indifference to the emergency during a foreign television interview.

He was sentenced to 59 years in prison.

‘We stand at a new dawn. This is the very beginning of change in our country. We don’t want to go back to the dark’

When that punishment triggered international outrage, an appeals court reduced his sentence to 35 years.

His jail term was suspended in October, when Zarganar was suddenly released, along with several hundred other political prisoners, as part of a reform movement being promoted by a new civilian government, led by President Thein Sein, a retired general.

After decades of harsh military rule, Burma has embarked on a series of dramatic changes that seek to bring opposition movements into the political process and saw Ms. Suu Kyi released from 18 years of house arrest.

Restrictions have been relaxed on the media, exiles have been invited to return home and ceasefires have been signed in Burma’s ethnic conflicts. Ms. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy has also been allowed to register as a political party and will contest 48 parliamentary by-elections in April.

“Our country is starting to change,” says Zarganar, who is in Toronto to speak at Ryerson University and the University of Toronto on Saturday.

“We stand at a new dawn. This is the very beginning of change in our country. We don’t want to go back to the dark.”

Granted his first passport ever, he is also leaving Burma for the first time in his life, on a whirlwind tour of Asia, North America and Europe.

He wants to drum up support for Burma’s reforms, urging foreign governments and people to recognize and encourage the changes taking place in his homeland and begging them not to let the military leaders revert to their past practices.

“This is a very critical time for our country,” he says. “Our country is like an infant baby. We need much attention now.”

Then, with a twinkle in his delivery that telegraphs the Burmese love for wordplay, he solemnly declares, “This is not as good time for jokes. This is a very critical time for our country. I don’t want to criticize. Really, I don’t want to set fire to the government. I like to tell my people and my government that the really important thing in our country is unity, peace and solidarity — UPS.”

“Our president, the other day delivered a speech in congress,” he goes on deadpan. “He said he wanted to exchange the military’s weapons for laptops. So, if he wants to deliver those laptops, he will want to use the UPS — unity, peace and solidarity.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/maung-thura-burma/feed0stdBurmese dissident Maung Thura spent five years in solitary confinement and was once locked in a dog kennel in Insein Prison.Peter Goodspeed: Iran’s threat to plunge Middle East into war may be to rally support at homehttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/peter-goodspeed-irans-threat-to-plunge-middle-east-into-war-may-be-to-rally-support-at-home
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By Peter Goodspeed

Iran’s leaders may be trying to rally support at home by adopting a belligerent stance towards critics of its nuclear program and threatening to plunge the Middle East into war, some experts say.

Tensions in the Middle East rose steadily Tuesday as Iran threatened to launch preemptive strikes against Israel and the West.

A day after it launched a massive military exercise to simulate defending against attacks on key nuclear sites — and two days after vowing to cut off oil sales to Britain and France in retaliation for sanctions — the deputy head of Iran’s armed forces said that, if threatened, Iran will launch preemptive assaults against its foes.

“Our strategy now is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran’s national interests, and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their actions,” Mohammed Hejazi the deputy head of Iran’s armed forces told the Fars news agency.

His comments came as Iran is reeling from economic sanctions imposed by Washington and the West and as talk of a potential Israeli military strike against Iran has escalated.

Iran’s leaders see themselves as victims of an undeclared war being waged by a coalition of the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and some European states, said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, a Middle East expert at Syracuse University in New York state.

They are under threat from cyber attacks like the Stuxnet virus; someone is killing their nuclear scientists and blowing up their nuclear facilities; the United States and Europeans have ratcheted up sanctions and are increasing contacts with Iranian opposition groups.

National Post GraphicsClick to enlarge this map of the Strait of Hormuz

“Tehran’s leaders are trying to rally support by speaking tough to the outside world,” Mr. Boroujerdi said. “They are trying to use threats to enhance their position. By reading the riot act to their nemesis, they are saying we too have aces up our sleeve and are capable of acting.

“I think this is Iran’s way of saying, ‘Look out, we can reach out and touch you.’”

Some elements within Iran’s ruling elite may think it is worthwhile to provoke some sort of military response from Israel, simply to solidify their own hold on power.

“I think there’s a legitimate concern that you have hardline actors in Tehran who feel like the walls are closing around them internationally and domestically there is this tremendous popular disaffection. And one way to try to resuscitate revolutionary fervor is to invite an attack, provoke some type of a military conflagration for their own domestic expediency,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Earlier this month, Alireza Forghani, a former governor of Kish Province and an ally of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, published an essay on the Internet entitled. “Iran Must Attack Israel by 2014.”

The article echoes Israeli claims for the need to attack Iran’s nuclear sites before Tehran enters a “zone of immunity” in which its nuclear program can not be rolled back, claiming it would be possible to “annihilate Israel” in just nine minutes through a series of rocket and missile attacks centred on specific urban centres, nuclear facilities and military targets.

The Iranian article appeared just a day after Ayatollah Khamenei delivered a Feb. 3 speech in which he talked of the need to wipe out the “cancerous growth” of Israel.

Iran has adopted an increasingly bellicose tone just days after it was accused of sending teams of assassins after Israeli diplomatic targets in India, Georgia and Thailand last week.

There has been a steady drumbeat of threats and counter-threats that have seen Iran promise to block international oil shipments through the Straits of Hormuz should oil sanctions cripple its own economy.

Iranian naval threats in the Strait of Hormuz have been matched by a U.S. naval build-up, supplemented with warships from Britain and France, in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has also recently lost three surveillance drones over Iran and Iran claims it broke up a U.S. spy ring and has condemned a U.S. citizen to death.

“At times of crisis it is usually easier to control the domestic situation and it is easier, they think, to make the public make sacrifices,” said Ali Alfoneh, an expert on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards at the American Enterprise Institute. “For example, during the war with Iraq the Iranian public paid a very, very high price. But the public was ready to do that because of the war.

“Here the regime is running a risk. They think it may be easy to mobilize the public, even when there are many deep divisions within Iran’s political elites. I’m not sure the public will go along.”

It is significant, he said, that Iran made its threat to launch preemptive strikes against Israel just one day before Iran officially starts the campaign period for parliamentary elections scheduled for March 2.

“This is very important because if Iran would attack hard targets, military targets in Israel, that could spin out of control. That could bring about a war, which Iran is not interested in,” he said.

Right now, the United States appears to have launched an intense diplomatic campaign to convince Israel to postpone any possible attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.

After spending a week meeting with officials in Israel, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, returned to Washington on the weekend and told reporters, “I don’t think it is a wise thing at this moment for Israel to launch a military attack on Iran.”

He said a strike “would be destabilizing” and “not prudent.”

U.S. National Defence Director Tom Donilon and U.S. National Director of Intelligence James Clapper are expected to preach the same warning all this week during visits to Israel in advance of a March 5 White House meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/peter-goodspeed-irans-threat-to-plunge-middle-east-into-war-may-be-to-rally-support-at-home/feed0stdIranClick to enlarge this map of the Strait of HormuzPeter Goodspeed: Bangkok blast may be latest salvo in Iran’s proxy war with Israelhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/peter-goodspeed-bangkok-blast-could-be-latest-salvo-in-iran-proxy-war
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/peter-goodspeed-bangkok-blast-could-be-latest-salvo-in-iran-proxy-war#respondTue, 14 Feb 2012 23:57:57 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=67692

A day before Iran plans to announce unspecified nuclear “achievements,” its apparently rapidly escalating proxy war with Israel spread to Thailand Tuesday, when an Iranian man blew off both his legs in a bizarre bombing in Bangkok.

Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defence Minister, who was in the Thai capital briefly on Sunday, described the incident as an Iranian terrorist act, saying it “proves once again that Iran and its proxies continue to perpetrate terror.”

The bombing came the day after two simultaneous bomb attacks on Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia, which Israel also blamed on Iran, a claim Tehran denounced as “sheer lies.”

But the nature of Tuesday’s bombing, its timing and the Iranian connection will all raise suspicions a covert war with Israel over Iran’s nuclear program is steadily being ratcheted up.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s President, announced on his personal website Tuesday he will make a major nuclear announcement Wednesday.

“Experts believe these achievements will show the world the extraordinary capability and knowledge of Iranians,” the statement said.

The Bangkok bombings came just one month after local police said they foiled an imminent possible terrorist attack. They arrested a Lebanese man with links to Hezbollah who led them to a cache of four tonnes of fertilizer and other bomb-making materials on Jan. 13.

Kerek Wongsa/ReutersA bomb disposal expert works at the site of an explosion in central Bangkok on Feb. 14, 2012.

Tuesday’s bombing incident began mid-afternoon, when an explosion blew the roof off a rented house in eastern Bangkok’s Sukhumvit neigbourhood, sending three men scurrying into the street.

City surveillance cameras apparently show two men — one wearing a baseball cap and dark jacket with a large backpack, and the other dressed in camouflage shorts — bolting from the building immediately after the blast.

A moment later, a third man, carrying a backpack and bleeding from his face and ears, also ran into the street.

As they scattered in different directions, the third man tried to flag down a taxi. But the driver refused to stop when he saw his would-be passenger covered in blood.

The man then threw what appears to have been a bomb or hand grenade after the taxi and started to flee down a side street, pursued by police.

As police leveled their guns, he threw another bomb at them. But it either hit a tree and bounced back, or slipped from his fingers and blew up beside him, blowing off one of his legs.

Kerek Wongsa/ReutersA postal worker empties a mail box in Regina.

Investigators found a passport nearby and identified the critically wounded man as Saeid Moradi, an Iranian who apparently entered Thailand from South Korea on Feb. 8 at the southern resort town of Phuket.

His black backpack was reportedly stuffed with Iranian currency, U.S. dollars and Thai bhat.

Thitima Chaisaeng, a government spokeswoman, said police reported the damaged house, which was rented for a month by three foreigners, was being used to make bombs.

Thai officials say they discovered C-4 plastic explosive and two explosive devices, consisting of nearly two kilograms of C-4 stuffed inside two radios. These were defused.

C-4 is popular with terrorists because it can be moulded into a shaped charge. Hezbollah has used the material frequently, especially in the 1994 bombing of the Khobar Towers residential complex in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. soldiers and injured another 372.

Similar explosives were used in a failed attack on Israel’s embassy in Bangkok in 1994, when suspected Hezbollah terrorists hijacked a truck, killed the driver and tied his body to a massive bomb inside the vehicle.

The attack was aborted at the last minute when they became involved in a minor traffic accident while driving to the embassy.

But they say they arrested a second Iranian man connected to the bomb-damaged house. Mohammed Hazaei, 42, was captured while waiting to board a plane to Malaysia.

The two captured Iranians may ultimately provide a direct link to Tehran in an escalating war of retaliation, in which Iran has vowed to revenge the assassination of several of its nuclear scientists.

Victoria Nuland, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman, said the United States was not ready to accuse anyone yet, but added, “While we await the results of the investigations, these events do come on the heels of other disrupted attacks targeted at Israel and Western interests, including an Iranian-sponsored attack in Baku, Azerbaijan, and a Hezbollah-linked attack in Bangkok, Thailand, before this.

“We seem to have an uptick in this kind of violence. We’re concerned about it. Some of these have been linked to Iran.”

Other experts are baffled by the terrorists’ apparent incompetence.

Will Hartley, an editor at Jane’s Terrorism & Insurgency Centre, said the three recent attacks appear to be “highly amateurish and lack the sophistication that would normally be expected from an operation executed by either Hezbollah or Iran’s own external operations wing, the Quds Force.”

The Middle East could be staggering toward an all-out war between Israel and Iran as Israeli leaders consider how to respond to Monday’s apparently co-ordinated attacks on Israeli embassies in India and Georgia.

“Iran, which is behind these two attacks, is the world’s largest terror exporter,” Mr. Netayahu said. “The government of Israel and its security services will continue to co-operate with local authorities against Iran-sponsored global terror.”

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The dramatic escalation in tensions comes as Israel is widely believed to be considering a full-scale military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in a bid to deny Tehran nuclear weapons.

Iran vehemently denied any responsibility for Monday’s attacks, which injured four people, including the wife of Israel’s military attaché in New Delhi.

REUTERS/Parivartan SharmaDiane Keaton hit all the hot shopping spots in Toronto last
week — and a scored a deal of a dress at Joe Fresh.

Ramin Mehmanparast, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, went so far as to tell the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency, “Israel perpetrated the terror actions to launch psychological warfare against Iran.”

Just last month, however, the Rafah news website, which is identified with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, threatened to take Iran’s war with Israel “beyond the borders of Iran and beyond the borders of the region.”

This month, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, threatened Israel, saying, “From now on, in any place, if any nation or any group confronts the Zionist regime, we will endorse and we will help. We have no fear expressing this.”

If Israel can prove Iran was behind Monday’s attacks, it may feel justified in launching a wide-ranging military retaliation against both Iran and Hezbollah.

In 1982, Israel started the First Lebanon War after an assassination attempt on its ambassador in Britain.

“Under international law, an attack on an embassy is an attack both on the embassy’s country and on the country in which the embassy is located. And under the charter of the United Nations, an attack against a nation’s citizens on its territory is an act of armed aggression that justifies retaliatory military action,” said Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor.

In the past, Israel has regarded it as essential to respond forcefully to terror attacks as a deterrent.

Last month, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, the Israeli Defence Force Chief of Staff, warned Iran not to test Israel’s resolve.

“We are witnessing efforts by Hezbollah and other hostile elements to perpetrate a brutal terror attack far from Israel,” he said.

On Monday, Mr. Netanyahu acknowledged Israel had already been targeted. “In recent months we have witnessed several attempts to attack Israeli citizens and Jews in several countries, including Azerbaijan, Thailand and others,” he said.

“In each instance we succeeded in foiling the attacks in co-operation with local authorities.”

“Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, were behind all of these attempted attacks,” he added.

In January, authorities in Azerbaijan arrested two people suspected of plotting to attack Israel’s ambassador and a local rabbi.

At about the same time, U.S. and Israeli officials warned of a possible terror attack in Thailand. Thai officials later said they had arrested a Lebanese man believed to be a member of Hezbollah over a plot to bomb tourists in Bangkok.

There is increasing alarm over what form any Israeli retaliation might take as it could push a low-intensity spy war involving intelligence operatives and terrorist proxies into an all-out shooting war between both countries.

If Israel were to decide to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in a bid to at least temporarily deny Tehran nuclear weapons, it may have to also launch a pre-emptive attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Hezbollah is said to have more than 50,000 rockets after its brief 2006 war with Israel. It is widely expected to launch them against Israel if there is an Israel attack on Iran.

“Israeli military planners probably would prefer to pre-empt such an attack, and at least take out the most dangerous and long-range missiles before they could be launched,” said Bruce Riedel, a former Middle East expert for the Central Intelligence Agency, now with the Brookings Institution.

“That calculation argues for striking Iran and Lebanon simultaneously, in the hope that the first blows would weaken both adversaries and compel an early ceasefire. That means Israeli resources would be stretched from the start with two wars.”

Some observers fear any direct attack on Iran could trigger a catastrophic chain of events, leading to a regional war, with worldwide terrorist attacks and threats to oil supplies globally.

But if Monday’s attack was instigated by Iran, that could suggest Iran’s leaders are becoming increasingly aggressive and possibly more dangerous as international sanctions threaten their regime.

In 1992, Iranian agents blew up the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, killing and injuring hundreds.

Last year, U.S. officials accused Tehran of masterminding a plot to hire Mexican drug lords to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington by car-bombing a restaurant.

There is disagreement between Israel and Washington on the timeline required by Iran to build nuclear weapons. Now, Israel could decide it has to act quickly to prevent Iran from becoming even more dangerous.

A terrorist attack that is tantamount to an act of war could provide the justification needed for such an attack.

But given the wide-ranging political and strategic ramifications of a direct attack, Israel might opt to ratchet up its covert war, possibly by intensifying attacks on Iranian scientists and sensitive weapons research sites.

“The bottom line is that Israeli planners have to contemplate a multi-front war from the moment of a strike on Iran,” said Mr. Riedel.

“The more variables in any planning process, the more likely you will face unanticipated consequences and unpleasant surprises once the action begins. The devil is always in the details.”
National Post• Email: pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com

Like the United States, Canada is in the midst of a foreign policy pivot in Asia. Only, while Washington is looking for ways to contain Beijing militarily, Ottawa is seeking to expand contacts and trade as it undergoes a massive new leadership transition.

Tuesday, Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, arrives in the Chinese capital for what almost amounts to a traditional “Team Canada” trade mission, seeking to strengthen economic ties with Canada’s second-largest trading partner.

With four cabinet ministers — John Baird, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Ed Fast, the International Trade Minister, Gerry Ritz, the Agriculture Minister, and Joe Oliver, the Natural Resources Minister — and seven MPs and 40 business executives and academics, he hopes to build on rapidly expanding ties that have pushed bilateral trade to US$57.7-billion a year in 2010.

“China’s growth as an emerging market is very significant for Canada’s business community, and it is an economic relationship that requires the attention of the highest political level,” said Peter Harder, president of the Canada-China Business Council.

Tuesday’s visit is Mr. Harper’s second to China in three years and marks a significant warming of relations.

When he first came to power in 2006, the Prime Minister said he didn’t think Canadians wanted him to sell out to China over the “almighty dollar.” He avoided China’s leaders, criticized Beijing’s human rights record, refused to attend the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and infuriated China by meeting Tibet’s Dalai Lama and giving him honorary Canadian citizenship.

In 2009, when he first travelled to Beijing and tried to reset relations, Mr. Harper was chided by Chinese leaders for having waited so long.

Since then, trade has boomed as a rapidly industrializing China’s need for Canadian natural resources increased almost exponentially.

“For nearly four years, from 2006 to 2009, China made no major investment in Canada,” said Wenran Jiang, chairman of the China Institute at the University of Alberta.

“Yet in the past two years, China has poured well over $16-billion of cash into Canada and that is counting only the eighth-largest energy deals alone.”

The recent U.S. rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline has further fueled Canadian interest in expanding energy sales to China. Mr. Harper’s visit comes just as Canadian officials are reviewing an application for the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would carry Alberta oil to British Columbia for eventual export to Asia.

The National Energy Board has recently granted the Kitimat, B.C., energy terminal a 20-year licence to export liquefied natural gas to Asia.

Mr. Harper, who is scheduled to meet China’s current and emerging leaders, will devote much of his time to firming up Canada’s role as a strategic energy partner.

In addition to meeting Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, and Wen Jiabao, the Premier, he will talk with Li Keqiang, the Vice-Premier, who is expected to replace Mr. Wen in October, when China undergoes a wholesale, generational, leadership change.

Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen are slated to retire, along with seven of the nine members of China’s Politburo.

When Mr. Harper travels to Guangdong and its megacity Chongqing, he will meet two provincial leaders who are expected to be promoted to the Politburo, but who represent competing strains in China’s leadership.

Wang Yang, the Communist party secretary in Guangdong, is widely regarded as one of the country’s leading reformers. Bo Xilai, Chongqing’s party boss, is an old-line leader who promotes socialist ideas and populist propaganda campaigns.

The meeting with Mr. Xilai could also net Canadian zoos in Toronto, Calgary and Granby, Que., a chance to share the loan of two pandas as a token of friendship.

The Chongqing area is the home of China’s panda preservation centre.

“What Mr. Harper is doing is regularizing contact between Beijing and Ottawa at the highest level and making China a part of the Canadian Prime Minister’s diplomatic routine,” said Yuen Pau Woo, president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

While the Canadian delegation has an economic agenda, Mr. Baird insists Mr. Harper will also raise human rights concerns.

Last month, Mr. Baird assailed China for its “abhorrent” treatment of religious minorities and on the weekend he described Beijing’s veto of a UN resolution condemning Syria as “deplorable” and “deeply disappointing.”

“We have some profound disagreements and we will certainly take the opportunity to have a good dialogue with them on those issues,” he said.

“We’re going to have a lot of wide-ranging discussions, good honest dialogue in the Canadian tradition, which we think is incredibly important.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/stephen-harper-in-china-2/feed0stdIn 2009, when he first travelled to Beijing and tried to reset relations, Stephen Harper was chided by Chinese leaders for having waited so long.Peter Goodspeed: Syria close to a long, vicious civil war as most violent fighting yet hits capitalhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/peter-goodspeed-syria-close-to-a-long-vicious-civil-war-as-most-violent-fighting-yet-hits-capital
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Richard Johnson/National PostClick on this image to see an interactive map of Syria that shows the locations of this week's major events.

Syria may be tottering towards a long, vicious civil war.

After ten months of non-violent popular protests were met with repeated violent reprisals, armed Syrian rebels have now staged prolonged battles with government troops on the doorstep of Damascus.

In the most intense fighting since the uprising began, Free Syrian Army defectors mounted scattered attacks Monday against government troops and tanks that were trying to recapture working class suburbs just 10 kilometres from the centre of the Syrian capital.

Syria’s power struggle has become increasingly militarized and has moved from provincial hotbeds of revolt in cities like Homs, Hama and Daraa to the very gates of Damascus — the heart of the Assad family dictatorship that has ruled Syria for 40 years.

A series of car bombs in the capital in late December, outside state security offices, were followed last week by small bands of rebels briefly seizing control of rural and working class areas to the east and north of the capital.

Monday, as convoys of government tanks, armoured personnel carriers and infantry troops surged into the Ghouta region east of Damascus, rebels resorted to guerrilla tactics and staged ambushes and counterattacks before withdrawing.

Videos posted on the Internet show Syrian soldiers shadowing a tank as it rolled through the streets of Saqba, a town just east of Damascus where rebels last week brazenly unfurled a green, white and black Syrian flag that predates the Assad family dynasty.

Activists claim more than 100 people have died in three days of fighting east of Damascus, while rebel groups say they lost 15 dead before withdrawing Monday from towns that had been the sites of repeated anti-government protests.

Evidence the Syrian conflict is intensifying came during the weekend when the government reported there were 50 military funerals for soldiers killed by rebels.

On Monday, Syria’s state news agency said another six soldiers died in a single attack near Daraa, when a convoy was ambushed and said “terrorists” blew up a gas pipeline near Homs.

The escalation in violence comes just days after the Arab League suspended its observer mission to Syria, as the pace of killing in the country increased, and a day before Arab League diplomats are scheduled to appear before the United Nations Security Council to seek a resolution calling on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down and transfer power to a government of national unity.

National Post GraphicsCLICK TO ENLARGE THIS IMAGE

Russia, a staunch ally of Syria’s with veto power on the UN Security Council, tried Monday to defuse the crisis by announcing Syrian officials had agreed to informal peace talks in Moscow with Syrian opposition representatives.

But spokesmen for the opposition Syrian National Council, based in Turkey, rejected the offer of mediation, saying Mr. Assad will have to resign first – a demand rejected by both Syria and Russia.

As fighting in Syria intensifies, there are reports of more soldiers defecting from the Syrian army to join the rebels and claims Syrian dissidents are receiving weapons from Sunni radicals from across the border in Iraq’s Anbar province.

On the weekend, The Times newspaper in London reported Syrian dissidents claiming Saudi Arabia and Qatar have both agreed to fund arms purchases by Syria’s rebels.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal has already called on the international community to take greater responsibility for ending the carnage in Syria, where 5,400 people are said to have died since March.

On Friday, the Saudi government also announced it was recognizing the Syrian National Council as Syria’s official representative.

Qatar, which was the first Arab state to recognize and arm anti-government rebels in Libya, has also appealed to the international community to send troops into Syria.

Syrian rebel leaders have also called on the West to impose a no-fly zone on Syria and urged Jordan and Turkey to create buffer zones along the Syria’s borders to protect refugees and facilitate the flow of arms into the country.

Russia fears any UN resolution on Syria could open the door to a Libya-style foreign intervention against its oldest ally in the Middle East and has threatened to veto any moves to force Mr. Assad from power.

As a result, Syria’s agony threatens to be prolonged and may spread.

“The country is clearly sliding into civil war and intense sectarian strife,” said Robert Danin of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “The stability once offered by the Assad family business has long since ended.

“But with Syria strategically located at the region’s epicentre, bordering countries vital to U.S. interests — including Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon — there is no reason to believe that increased turmoil and instability in Syria will remain contained there.”

For some the temptation to intervene is intense, since it holds out the prospect of readjusting the geopolitical alignment of the Middle East.

“Hastening Bashar al-Assad’s fall, aside from being the right thing to do, would also be squarely in our self-interest,” said Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution. “The Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis would be destroyed. Iran would find itself significantly weakened without its traditional entry point into the Arab world. Hezbollah, dependent on both Iranian and Syrian military and financial support, would also suffer. A democratic Syria, meanwhile, would likely be more in line with U.S. interests.”

But given recent U.S. experience in Iraq and the prolonged and costly NATO campaign to depose Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, some experts warn an international intervention in Syria could be a disaster.

“The Syrian opposition is far weaker, more divided, and does not control any territory,” said Marc Lynch, a Middle East expert at George Washington University. “There are no front lines dividing the forces which can be separated by air power, no tanks and personnel carriers conveniently driving along empty desert roads to be targeted from the sky. The killing in Syria is being done in densely populated urban environments.

“Any effort to intervene primarily through air power, as in Libya, would be extremely problematic. A No Fly Zone in Syria is not a cheap alternative to war – it is war, and one which would quickly become messy.”

In the end, as major powers stand by on the sidelines, watching a deeply divided and increasingly disunited Syria implode, the country seems doomed to slide into the type of prolonged civil war that devastated Lebanon for 15 years.

“The civil war in Syria has not only started, it is already getting worse,” Abdelbari Atwan, editor of the pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi, wrote last week.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/peter-goodspeed-syria-close-to-a-long-vicious-civil-war-as-most-violent-fighting-yet-hits-capital/feed0stdSyrian soldiers who defected to join the Free Syrian Army are seen among demonstrators during a protest against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in Kafranbel near Idlib January 29, 2012Click on this image to see an interactive map of Syria that shows the locations of this week's major events.Click to enlargeGoodspeed Analysis: If sanctions on Iran fail, war may be inevitablehttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/peter-goodspeed-if-sanctions-against-iran-fail-war-may-be-inevitable
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The European Union joined the United States Monday in launching an economic war against Iran to force it to abandon a suspected nuclear weapons program.

By imposing an embargo on Iranian oil exports and freezing assets of its central bank, EU members hope to cut so deeply into government revenues Tehran will agree to accept international safeguards on its nuclear program.

But the sanctions themselves may be the penultimate step before a possible military attack.

Western leaders like Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, have insisted stiff economic sanctions are necessary to avert a possible war with Iran.

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The EU is Iran’s second-largest oil customer, after China, and buys up to 20% of its oil.

If other U.S. allies, such as Japan and South Korea, follow suit, the sanctions imposed Monday could hit more than a third of Iran’s crude oil exports, which account for 80% of the government’s operating revenue.

The mere threat of sanctions in recent weeks has been enough to send Iran’s economy into turmoil, squeezing its banks and sending the rial plunging to its lowest level yet against the U.S. dollar, as frightened Iranians rushed to move their life savings into gold and foreign currency.

Iran’s economy is believed to be vulnerable to international sanctions after three decades of upheaval, regional conflict, government mismanagement and increasing sanctions.

The latest round of international penalties could influence Iran’s parliamentary elections, scheduled for March, as pressure from abroad may strengthen opponents of Iran’s theocracy. But it remains to be seen if it is possible to cripple the second-largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) without also damaging the world’s economy.

GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images"If only a small percentage of eye injuries could be prevented, a significant amount of suffering to individuals could be avoided," says Dr. Keith Gordon, vice president of research at CNIB.

Harsh sanctions against Iran could rebound against European countries already struggling with their own economic crises.

With Italy, Spain and Greece the main European importers of Iranian oil, the EU had to agree to phase in its embargo to give them time to adjust. It also had to promise cash-strapped Greece it would make up any extra costs Athens incurs as a result of the embargo.

For its part, Iran has threatened to strike back by immediately refusing to sell oil to Europe, instead of waiting for the EU sanctions to take effect July 1.

On Monday, two senior Iranian lawmakers stepped up talk of retaliation, saying Iran will close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s crude oil flows.

Mohammad Ismail Kowsari, deputy head of Iran’s national security committee, said the Strait “would definitely be closed if the sale of Iranian oil is violated in any way,” while Ali Fallahian, a former intelligence minister and member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, told the Fars News Agency Iran should cut off all oil sales to Europe immediately and consider curtailing shipping through the Strait.

Any move to close the Strait of Hormuz risks a major naval confrontation with the West.

The day before the EU approved its oil embargo, a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group, led by USS Abraham Lincoln and accompanied by a British Royal Navy frigate and a French warship, sailed through the Strait and entered the Persian Gulf in defiance of repeated Iranian threats.

The United States has another aircraft carrier, USS Carl Vinson, on duty nearby in the Arabian Sea and is scheduled to dispatch a third aircraft carrier battle group to the region in two weeks.

Iran has options other than closing the Strait.

“It could begin to aggravate upward pressures on oil prices by contributing to the growing instability in Iraq that has emerged since the U.S. completed its troop withdrawal and the Shia ruling clique has begun a de facto war of attrition against the Sunnis,” said Paul Stevens of the Chatham House think-tank in London.

Richard Johnson/National Post GraphicsClick to enlarge

“This could certainly cause problems with Iraqi oil exports. It could also make serious trouble for NATO in Afghanistan. It could also put huge pressure on the Gulf Cooperation Council exporters to be, at the very least, slow in offering replacements to Europe. At worst it could even threaten GCC export facilities.”

The United Nations has imposed four rounds of sanctions against Iran in a bid to convince it to abandon a nuclear energy program suspected of secretly developing nuclear weapons.

But Iran has repeatedly denied the charge and responded with increasingly strident rhetoric and outright belligerence.

Recently it announced it was manufacturing nuclear fuel rods on its own and expanding uranium enrichment operations at a heavily protected underground facility near Qom.

At the same time, Iran has tried to signal a willingness to talk, without seriously committing itself to negotiations.

While refusing to respond to an October EU invitation to open talks on its nuclear program, Tehran has agreed to allow a team of International Atomic Energy Agency officials to visit Sunday for three days “to resolve all outstanding substantive issues.”

Few critics expect much to come from the hurried inspections, noting Iran’s recent decision to accelerate its nuclear enrichment program already violates six UN Security Council resolutions and 11 resolutions by the IAEA’s board.

Some experts, however, warn that tightening the economic vise may backfire and embolden the regime.

“The more we turn up the heat on Iran, the more Iran will fight back, and the way they like to fight back [using terrorism and proxies like Hezbollah] could easily lead to unintended escalation,” said Kenneth Pollack, director of the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Washington-based Brookings Institute.

“Iranians already see a concerted, undeclared war being waged against them by a coalition of the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and some European states. They are under cyber attack like the Stuxnet virus. Someone is killing their nuclear scientists in the streets of Tehran and blowing up their missile facilities.

“The United States and Europeans have ratcheted up their contacts with the Iranian opposition … and the Americans and Europeans are waging economic warfare in the form of increasingly crippling sanctions.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/peter-goodspeed-if-sanctions-against-iran-fail-war-may-be-inevitable/feed0stdThe USS Abraham Lincoln and USS John C. Stennis in the Arabian Sea on Thursday. The USS Abraham Lincoln passed through the Strait of Hormuz and into the Gulf Sunday, a day after Iran backed away from an earlier threat to take action if an American carrier returned to the strategic waterway.European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine AshtonClick to enlargeUSS Abraham Lincoln and USS John C. Stennis on Thursday.Goodspeed Analysis: Former-cricket star Imran Khan jolts politics in Pakistanhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/goodspeed-analysis-former-cricket-star-imran-kahn-jolts-politics-in-pakistan
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/goodspeed-analysis-former-cricket-star-imran-kahn-jolts-politics-in-pakistan#respondThu, 19 Jan 2012 04:19:10 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=64377

In a time of deep disillusion with Pakistan’s politicians, Imran Khan’s star is rising.

The 59-year-old former playboy, cricket star and philanthropist is a celebrity outsider in a country dominated by patronage, politics and the military. Now, he may be poised to influence or even form Pakistan’s next government.

Although his party has won only a single seat in parliament in its 15-year history, Mr. Khan stands to benefit from the deadlock and divisions that torment Pakistan’s politics.

As a vocal critic of his country’s corrupt political system and its close military ties to the United States, Mr. Khan is widely regarded as a “clean” politician who could transform a decrepit system.

Last October, he rattled Pakistan politics when he staged a rally in his home town of Lahore, the political stronghold of opposition leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

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The rally, which was nationally televised and supplemented with performances by pop singers, attracted more than 100,000 people. It also injected a new energy into the country’s politics.

On Christmas Day, Mr. Khan organized an equally successful repeat rally that drew more than 100,000 in Karachi, the geographical power base of Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistan President, and the ruling Pakistan Peoples’ Party.

Also in December, an online YouGov-Cambridge poll found Mr. Khan the most popular political figure in Pakistan, with 77% of respondents saying he is best suited to lead the country. Two-thirds of those polled also said they plan to vote for his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI ,or Pakistani Justice Movement).

“The survey sample focused on urban rather than rural Pakistan,” said Joel Rogers, director of YouGov-Cambridge, a global pollster associated with Cambridge University in Britain.

“But Khan’s lead in popularity is still simply striking.”

In cricket-crazy Pakistan, he may be more popular now than when he captained its cricket team to win the 1992 World Cup.

“A favourite jibe of Pakistan’s political elite has long been that he is a celebrity outsider riding on little more than sporting status,” said Mr. Rogers.

“But these critics miss the point: it is precisely Khan’s status as an outsider to various fiefdoms of national power that has helped underwrite his popularity.”

“There is a high degree of disappointment with weak government and governance in Pakistan,” said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistan ambassador to the United States and Britain.

“There is disappointment with dysfunctional politics, which continue to pivot around patronage and not policy.

“Imran Khan is tapping into stirrings for change that really are reflections of the socio-economic changes of the last couple of decades,” she added. “They are transforming the national landscape in Pakistan.”

A. MAJEED/AFP/Getty ImagesSupporters of former Pakistani cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan attend a public meeting in Peshawar on Nov. 25.

Using electronic media, the Internet and social media, like Facebook and Twitter, Mr. Khan appeals to the mass of Pakistanis under 25 who make up nearly half the population.

“Young people want somebody out there who reflects and embodies their aspirations and the existing political parties are not doing that,” said Ms. Lodhi.

Mr. Khan promises to challenge the status quo. He regularly tells voters he is part of a tsunami of reform set to sweep the country and turn Pakistan into “the Islamic welfare state it was envisioned to be.”

His promises to change the corruption, poverty and violence reflect Pakistan’s deep conservatism, profound nationalism and rising anger over its relations with the U.S.

The politician, whose family is Pashtun, is infuriated by U.S. drone strikes in the northwest tribal areas, which he claims kill 15 civilians for every Taliban terrorist they target. He is also opposed to Pakistan’s involvement in the War on Terror and wants to end its reliance on U.S. foreign aid.

In the past, Mr. Khan supported the 1999 military coup that brought Pervez Musharraf to power, saying he wanted the military to “end corruption and clear out the political mafias.”

Now, his liberal critics sneeringly insist he is a stooge for the armed forces and claim his sudden popularity is being promoted by the military.

The popularity of Mr. Khan and the PTI have peaked just as Pakistan’s politics, ruled by a succession of dictators and corrupt feudal dynasties, has all but ground to a halt — parliament is deadlocked, there are allegations of corruption against the president and rumours of a “soft coup,” in which the military could use the courts to force out the government.

Facing possible charges of contempt of court, Yousuf Raza Gilani, the Prime Minister, has been ordered to appear before the Supreme Court Thursday to explain why he has refused to ask Switzerland to re-open a multimillion-dollar corruption and money-laundering investigation into Mr. Zardari’s business dealings when his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was prime minister in the 1990s.

Mr. Gilani insists Mr. Zardari is immune from prosecution while he remains president. But the Supreme Court has already scrapped a 2007 National Reconciliation Ordinance that enabled Mr. Zardari to re-enter politics by granting legal immunity to all politicians and bureaucrats accused of wrongdoing from 1986 to Oct. 12, 1999.

Mr. Zardari and 8,000 others benefitted from the sweeping amnesty. If it is set aside, the PPP may lose enough members of parliament to force the government to resign.

The Supreme Court is also investigating claims Mr. Zardari was behind a secret memo sent to senior U.S. officials last May pleading for U.S. intervention to prevent Pakistan’s armed forces from staging a coup, after U.S. commandos killed Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan.

The allegation has poisoned relations between the military and the civilian government, and resulted in a power struggle that has many fearing a further degeneration of Pakistan’s politics.

“Politically, the system is now in checkmate,” said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Centre at the Atlantic Council.

“There is a standoff between a fairly autonomous judiciary, the president and prime minister, the army chief and the media and civil society. No one really has overwhelming superiority. Each one thinks it has an ace up its sleeve, but it is not clear.”

Surrounded by strife and uncertainty, Mr. Khan has moved from being a political joke to a potential kingmaker.

“Once an electoral nonentity, Khan’s PTI could potentially win dozens of National Assembly seats in the next polls,” said Arif Rafiq, a Washington-based political and security consultant.

General elections do not have to be held until 2013, but voters are widely expected to go to the polls earlier.

Even then, despite his commanding lead in popularity polls, Mr. Khan may stumble.

“This is not a democracy: it’s Pakistan,” said Mr. Rogers.

“At times, the politics of this country read less like a national history and more like a lost script from the Godfather films.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/goodspeed-analysis-former-cricket-star-imran-kahn-jolts-politics-in-pakistan/feed0stdSince October, Imran Khan has twice attracted more than 100,000 people to rallies in Pakistan’s major cities.Supporters of former Pakistani cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan attend a public meeting in Peshawar on Nov. 25.